Where I Can
by Quinton Notwen
Summary: A series of One Shots featuring the Eighth Doctor, as he proceeds towards his destiny. Series is in no particular order...but feel free to piece together a time line.
1. Where I Can

**Where I Can**

**8888**

They were sick and injured. They were men, women, and children. All were smudged with mud and soot and filth and blood. All were lost. All were caught in the flames of a war they couldn't begin to understand let alone be a party to.

They were shuffling as fast as they could, the able helping the disabled, the strong carrying the weak. Over the next rise was a ship it was going to take them away. Flames erupted randomly everywhere. The man who'd saved them from the raid was running ahead of the line of refugees up the hill and looked over the ridge. He carried a small tablet seemingly bonded to a coral-like rock. He stuffed it back into a satchel he had hung diagonally across his chest. He turned back to the line of people.

"Quickly, the ship will leave soon!" he shouted over the chaos and moans.

Corre knew the transport vessel wouldn't stay long, they never did. It was too dangerous in these parts and a window to escape could slam shut at any moment. He winced and decided to scope the situation himself, running up to the man. Corre winced as he felt his skin pull against his thin frame. Corre's long thin hair kept falling into his one good eye. Corre clambered up the incline stepping over rocks. He had to stop and leaned forward hands on knees gasping for breath; he could feel the pain of skin tearing and his lungs burned from the acrid smoke. He heaved himself up to the ridge line and looked down as the hissing vessel sitting in the valley beyond. He bent over and wheezed slightly dizzy.

"We need more time." Corre coughed, finally, his chest rattled as he gasped for breath.

"Scorens won't stay much longer; things are getting too hot for comfort." Said the man; his eyes were intent on the vessel below. "The ship's already in the first stage of lift off." The man looked back at Corre. "Corre, are you ok?"

"I'm fine…" Corre said, waving the question off with his right hand and leaning hard on his left knee with his other hand, "…better than if you hadn't showed up. The Ogrons would've massacred us."

"All I did was a light show." The first man said kneeling down and looking in the man's eyes. "You need to rest."

"No time, you said…" Corre said.

"We'll make time." The man said, taking out a handkerchief and dobbing it on Corre's dark sweaty forehead. He looked down and Corre saw the expanding red stain his dingy shirt. The man looked back up at him. "You've broken your stitches again…You were told not to lift anything."

"I had to help her over that last rise. She was pregnant." Corre said, wincing as the man pressed the area.

"Lay down." The man said forcibly pushing Corre onto the ground. "I might be able to stop the bleeding."

"So, you're a doctor now?" Corre laughed and winced as he did.

"I have some experience with the profession." The man said as he rummaged through his satchel.

"I saw you, in the camp, what you did… It was amazing; I've never seen the Ogrons run away like that, ever, you had them terrified." Corre said watching the man. The man was determined, his blue eyes searching feverishly in the dark. His bluish leather jacket glinted in the lights of the flames. The man growled in frustration as he wasn't finding what he was looking for. The man had curly thin auburn hair that played down on his Byron-esque face. "I mean, considering who the Ogrons work for, I didn't think anything in the universe scared them."

"It's an ancestral response; even the Ogrons' employers couldn't breed out the fear of their own ancestral gods." The man said his hands nearly elbow deep in the satchel. He suddenly smiled. "There it is!" He pulled out a small device metal with a little sharp end. He looked at Corre. "I'm going to cauterize the wound, this is going to hurt. I need you to hold very still!"

"What, what is that?" Corre said as he looked skeptically at the device.

"A laser lance." the man said as he pressed Corre to the ground. "Hold still."

"Are you nuts!" Corre shouted as he struggled. The man had surprising strength and pressed harder on Corre's shoulder pinning him.

"On the appropriate setting, the lance will not slice but will simply seal the wound." The man growled as he pulled Corre's shirt up with his free hand, holding the lance between his teeth. "We don't have time to do this proper, so, I'm sorry."

Corre heard the buzz and then felt the searing pain as a faint red glow burned from his abdomen. Corre's body tried to seize and fight and get away but the man's pin was complete. Seconds later the buzz was over. The pain remained but the man lifted his pin and Corre screamed and held the hot flesh that was still smoking, but there was no more blood.

"You son of a…!" Corre screamed.

"I know." The man leaned down and helped Corre up to his feet. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small paper sack and held it as an offering to Corre. He smiled encouragingly. "Have a jelly-baby, in fact have as many as you want."

Corre reached in pulled out a yellow one. He put it in his mouth; it was sour, at first then sweet. He chewed and he smiled, it was the first luxury he'd had in many years. He didn't even care where this man had found sweets in a universe falling apart at the seams. He reached in a grabbed another one, red, and ate it feeling the sugary confection melt into pure bliss. It was erasing the pain one moment of pure bliss and then he opened his eyes.

The sky exploded. Not the atmosphere, but the sky beyond, blinding light erupted. The ground shook. He felt the wind shift. The flames roared loudly. Corre, blinked rubbed his eyes until his vision blurred back into existence. He looked down the hillside. The refugees were on the ground they were crying and shouting.

"No! No, no, nononononono!" The man shouted to the sky. He looked down the hill to the ship. Klaxons were screaming from the vessel. The man turned to Corre. "Go to them, get them on their feet! Get them moving!

"What are you going to do?" Corre asked, he looked to the sky, the stars were different, were moving. He looked back to the man; who was holding the tablet again. "What's going on!?"

"It's the Time Lords." The man said, gritting his teeth as he looked at the tablet. "They detonated the whole Paswall's cluster with some kind of temporal embolism. The entire quadrant's history is changing as we speak, and not for the better." The man looked at Corre. "You need to get out of here; NOW!" The man turned to the transport ship. "I'll slow Scorens down…you get the people to the ship!"

Corre staggered backward and ran towards the crowds, the screaming and crying and chaos. The man disappeared over the ridge. Corre watched the sky as the changing stars started to disappear into the gulf of darkness. He ran, his stomach hurt but he ignored it and ran. He shouted to the men who were standing and gathered them to get the others on their feet. It took him several minutes to realize that the klaxons had fallen silent. Corre started ushering people up the rise and over the ridge. The ship was still there. The man was pointing something at the ship with both hands firmly clenched; it was a small thin rod. The ship's thrusters flickered, seemed to be struggling. The vessel was definitely trying to take off. As the refugees trickled down the hill towards the ship Corre ran towards the man.

"You've done it!" Corre shouted as he ran towards the man. He looked back. The refugees were rushing the ship. The people were shouting for the doors to open. "You did it!"

"Go!" The man said between gritted teeth. "Tell Scorens that I won't release the thrusters from the resonance until he gets the refugees on board."

"What about you?" Corre asked, looking at the man. The rod was silver with a red, round dish shape on top of it. It was whirring very loudly in a very high pitched manner.

"If I go, if I move, the resonance will break." The man said, he gave Corre a side-long glance. "Don't worry; I've got my own way out. Just go!"

"Who…who are you?" Corre looked. "The people will want to know who saved them."

"I'm a traveler, I help where I can; I'm nobody special. If anyone asks, I, officially, was never here." The man said, his arms straining against the rod he was holding. "Just go, trust me, nobody will be happy to know who I am."

"But…"

"Go! I can't keep this up forever, and we don't have time." The man said. "Or rather we don't have the right kind of time!"

Corre nodded slowly and turned and ran. He ran to the crowd. A crewman was standing on some scaffold on the ship; he was wearing the uniform of the transport vessel.

Corre cupped his hands over his mouth. "HEY! YOU AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE UNTIL YOU LET US IN!" The crewman looked down at Corre and then looked to the stern of the vessel. Corre took a painfully deep breath and bellowed. "HE'S GOT YOU TRAPPED IN A RESONANCE FIELD! WON'T LET YOU GO UNTIL YOU LET US ON!" The ground erupted under their feet again. Corre stared up at the crewman and shouted. "You don't let us on we all die together!"

The crewman lifted his shirt sleeve to his mouth. Something was said and then the cargo doors of the ship opened. The people flooded into the lights of the ship's interior. Corre turned his head as he got bounced by the crowds. He saw the man, their savior. The man staggered slightly back in exhaustion as he looked to the refugees, then his eyes caught Corre's. The man nodded weakly. Corre got caught in a stream of people who pulled him into the ship, he lost sight of the man as he entered into the cargo bay and the smell of sanitized air filled his nostrils. The cargo door hissed and slowly closed sealing the outside from the rest him.

Corre turned, he wanted to shout that there was one more person, but he felt the jolt of the ship's thrusters pouring on the power. He felt the vessel jostle against gravity and then the inertia of the acceleration and ascent.

"Corre…" A woman next to him held his shoulder. "We'd never have made it without you."

"Not me." Said Corre quietly. "It was that stranger. He saved me, and us. He stopped the ship, bought us time."

"Who was he?" Asked the woman, searching Corre.

"I don't know, some kind of battle medic, I guess, some kind of doctor." Corre responded.


	2. Run Away

**Run Away**

**8888**

"They say there is a Tharil safe haven out there somewhere." The Corsair said. He took a long drink from the glass and winced as the fluid burned the back of his throat; he dropped the glass back on the bar. "They say that's where Lady Romana fled after the fall of the citadel to Rassilon's coup."

The Doctor didn't say anything. He simply looked at the mirror in front of him. 1852 New Mexico, he hadn't expected to find the Corsair in a sideshow circus, but then again trying to expect anything from the Corsair was risky business. The Corsair had regenerated since he'd last saw him, and was now a hulk of a man far beyond seven foot tall with Paul Bunyan shoulders. He had a simple but robust moustache trimmed neatly. His Ourosboros tattoo was displayed on his right forearm and was tight against the bulging muscle. He was wearing a ten-gallon hat and snake-skin boots with silver spurs.

"You realize that stunt you pulled in the Medusa Cascade has got them enraged," The Corsair cupped his hands around his whiskey glass, "and by 'them' I don't mean the dust-bins." The Corsair's green eyes looked at the Doctor from the mirror. "You saved an entire super-cluster from a horde of vampires released in that battle near Dronid, but they only see the strategic loss of the D-Mat Gun."

"It isn't lost, you know." The Doctor finally said. He gave the Corsair a side-long glance. "I have it, a weapon like that shouldn't be in the hands of the people running things now."

"With that weapon the Time Lords could finish this war instantly." The Corsair took another drink.

"And then what?" The Doctor looked down at his own drink. "I know Rassilon. I've dealt with his brand of egoism before. He won't stop at the Daleks, he won't even stop at the Universe. There was a reason he was trapped in that tower by us. He's no better than the Daleks, in some ways he is worse. The Daleks for all their bluster and bombasticity are trivial compared to Rassilon and his New Time Lord Empire."

"So what's your plan then?" The Corsair turned and looked at the Doctor intently. The Doctor was smaller, frailer than the Corsair remembered. Dressed in an emerald green jacket and gilded vest with a small fob watch hung lop-sided from the chest pocket. His hair was shorter now, still curly but noticeably thinner. "How long do you think you can hide? I've had to shut down my TARDIS power matrix; they tried to hijack me through the Eye of Harmony."

"Type 87's have a leaky backdoor through the singularity control software. I told you to downgrade when I last saw you." The Doctor replied taking a deep breath. "Plus, the old girl is so jerry-rigged and cross-wired even if they tried to get control the poor bastards would get lost in the internal control matrix, it'd take ten technicians to get the first technician's mind out, and then they'd need someone else to get the ten technicians out."

"You think that will stop them?" The Corsair smirked.

"No, no, I don't, but I'm working on a more permanent solution." The Doctor replied. He looked up at the Corsair. "You said something about a Tharil safe haven?"

"There are rumors." The Corsair nodded. "After Romana's presidency ended the Tharils pulled out of the military treaty with the Time Lords. They retreated back across the CVE. It's said they've been shuttling people who want to escape into E-Space. We could go. You and me, we'll find other Time Lords who believe like we do, believe that this is insanity; we could retreat to E-Space help build some kind of Time Lord society from the smoking remains of the madness that is on Gallifrey."

"The last I heard the Time Lords have destroyed all the active CVEs. Even if there was a Tharil safe haven, there'd be no way to it." The Doctor replied; he looked back to his glass.

"The Tharils are clever kitties." The Corsair put his huge arm around the Doctor's shoulder. His arm was almost as thick as the Doctor's head and neck. The arm's weight caused the Doctor to bow slightly against its weight. "I'm sure they've got some secret spot out there, we've just got to find it."

"You are welcome to search." The Doctor said, a finger tracing the edge of his glass. "There are still things I have to do here."

"If you want I'll find that granddaughter of yours, take her with me." The Corsair smiled hopefully.

"No, Susan has already made her decision. She's going to help as many people on Earth as possible." The Doctor replied. "She was always braver than people gave her credit for. In some ways she is braver than I am. She's been on the front lines of this for decades now, while I've sulked on empty worlds and monastic asteroids."

"You were there when it was important!" The Corsair encouraged, rubbing the Doctor's shoulders, which amounted to something very similar to shaking him like a doll. "You swooped in and saved that Draconian colony from that N-Form. That Bandril colonial fleet would've been eradicated in the battle of Kuvantru if you hadn't opened that dimensional warp gate using the Hand! I heard you were at the Eye of Orion shuttling people out when the Time Lords and the Daleks started lobbing black holes at each other. They hold parades for you at Karfel, for what you did stopping that Time Lord bombardment of their time corridor."

"And for every Kuvantru, every Draconian colony, every Eye of Orion, every Karfel…there's an Arcadia." The Doctor sloughed the Corsair's arm off his shoulder. He sighed, and held his head in his hands. "I can still hear them. Praying to their gods as the Time Lords detonated that weapon. It was immaterial; the Daleks would have never succeeded there. I had already poisoned the well…they were praying to the Daleks to save them from us! I watched the Time Lords slaughter an entire world for no reason other than the fact that the Daleks were there. I watched the Time Lords become demons."

"You can't blame…"

"I CAN!" The Doctor glared at the Corsair, a dagger's blade slicing from each iris. "I had the opportunity to stop this. I was there…I WAS THERE! The wires were in my hands!" The Doctor lifted his hands and held them in front of his face. "I hesitated. I second-guessed myself, and the universe suffers from MY decision." The Doctor sighed and turned back to the bar and cupped his hands around his glass. "I often think of what would've happened if I had gone through with it. How much different the universe would be."

"The universe would be a darker place." The Corsair said quietly, looking down at the Doctor. "A universe without the Doctor would not be a universe worth living in. If you had done it, you would've become someone darker, someone who would've set a dangerous precedent for himself and for the universe as a whole. You are a good man, Doctor; you can't be everywhere, every-when. This war is pervasive to the very core of reality itself, you won't be able to save everyone. You can only do what you can, and if you came with me you could shape a brand new era, teach a whole new civilization how to be good."

"No…" The Doctor said, shaking his head. "For too long my instincts have been to run away. I've fled so much in my life. I fled Gallifrey, I fled from my responsibilities as Lord President, even now rather than face my demons I have hidden. I have to stay here and for once in my long life see this out."

"You will die, everyone will die, Doctor." The Corsair said his eyes stern on the shorter man. "This war, no one will win, you can't stop it."

The Doctor lifted his glass. He gulped the drink down and placed the glass back on the bar and dropped three silver coins next to the glass. The Doctor looked up at the Corsair.

"I've always been prepared to die for a cause." The Doctor said. "Not even large causes. If I die saving a single person, then my death would be worth it." The Doctor smiled and patted the Corsair on the chest; he had aimed for the Corsair's shoulder but couldn't quite reach. "Go, find this safe haven, and get as many as you can there. It doesn't matter what species. Time Lords that think like us, Draconians, Sunari…if you can find an impossible pacifist, inclusive Dalek, bring them with you. You found your new civilization, and if we survive this, if I live to see the end of the war, I will find you and bring you and your civilization to help rebuild the universe."

The Doctor took a step back and then started to walk towards the swinging door of the saloon. He put his hand on the wooden panel.

"Where are you going now?" The Corsair asked.

The Doctor turned and looked back. "I never know until I open the TARDIS doors. She takes me where she wants to go; I'm just along for the ride."

The Doctor pressed on the doors and slid through them leaving them swinging as he disappeared onto the streets of Santa Fe. It would be the last time the Doctor saw the Corsair. Though it would not be the last the Corsair heard of the Doctor. The stories of heroism, of the stranger that showed up at the most dire hour and saved colonies, saved refugees, saved a crying child on the shores of destruction, the man who disappeared as suddenly as he arrived.


	3. Scavenger

**Scavenger**

**88888**

The Doctor coughed as the piping steamed a green exhaust. He waved his hand in front of his face trying to dispel the horrible gas. He reached into the breast pocket of his vest and pulled out a dirty, satin handkerchief and coughed into it and then held it there with one hand.

He'd slipped onto the world after the fleets had left. Mountains of broken ships, machines and assorted detritus covered the ground. Here and there a body was found burnt and mangled beyond recognition. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of decomposition. He shuffled forward looking carefully at the shards of metal and broken frames of machinery. It won't be long now before the others showed up, the Shansheeth were probably already in orbit, and not far behind would be the other scavengers that hung out on the fringes of the engagement zone hoping to find a prized piece of technology or trophies or something else they may be able to hold for ransom.

He found a promising pile of what looked like a crashed Bowship. He took out his sonic screwdriver and slowly proceeded to work on what he concluded was the seam of a bulkhead door. He needed a set of mercury fluid links, and some Zeiton 7, and some bits and bobs he needed to reconstruct the helmic regulator. The bulkhead hissed loudly in response to his sonic screwdriver. He slipped his screwdriver into his jacket pocket and then grabbed the edges of the door and heaved, straining against the warped frame. The metal growled as it ground against the frame but he was able to shift it enough to slip inside. The air inside was cold, or colder than the outside. It was dark, too, only the flashing of small sparks showed brief half-formed scenes. The Doctor fished into his satchel and pulled out a small torch, turned it on and swept the beam of light across the expanse in front of him. The vessel was massive on the inside, which was to say something, as the bowship was enormous on the outside as well.

"This must be a fighter bay." The Doctor murmured to himself as he waded through the destruction. He saw remnants of War-TARDISes crumpled under their own dimensional sheer. He looked around and found a bar code on a far wall. He scrambled towards it. The Doctor put the torch between his teeth and looked into his satchel and pulled out a small tablet. The screen flickered to life shining an unseemly organic green. He lifted the tablet up to the bar code, it beeped and then a map morphed in three dimensions onto the screen. "If I'm here, then the engine room should be…" The Doctor held the tablet in one hand and pulled the torch from his mouth with his other and then swept the light around, "this way."

It had taken him hours to get through the large blast doors. He crept through half-smashed corridors. The Time Lords had gotten cold lately, the last few times he'd had to do this he'd found not quite dead Time Lord soldiers. He shuddered silently to himself as he thought about it. At first he tried to help them. However, over time he'd come to find that most were so far gone they were beyond help. They simply regenerated further and further becoming more horrific with each burst of light, only to eventually die as their bodies degraded beyond any saving. He turned a corner and heard something rustle in the dark.

He swept his flashlight around. There was a tangle of beams balled up in the corridor ahead. The Doctor winced involuntarily and looked away.

"Help me…" A whisper wafted up from the dark.

The Doctor swallowed hard. It was the worst when they were still conscious. He turned the light back towards the source of the whisper. The soldier was caught underneath the metal pylons. There was blood everywhere, the Doctor couldn't see much past the man's waist. He ran over to the soldier.

"I'm here." The Doctor said as he looked down at the soldier, he couldn't be too old, possibly only a century at most. "Hold still."

"I…I…can't…feel my legs." The soldier groaned as he looked up at the Doctor. His eyes were brown like his hair; his skin was pale, probably due to blood loss. "Who are you? You aren't one of the crew."

"Now's not the time, soldier." The Doctor said gruffly. He scanned the man with the tablet he kept in his satchel. The red suit with white frillings had a sash across his chest, filled with bits of tools. "This pylon is bisecting you at the waist." The Doctor took a deep breath, there was no way he was going to move that pylon on his own. "Have you regenerated yet?"

The soldier shook his head and coughed, speckles of blood flung from his lips onto the floor. "Where's my crew?"

"The bowship crashed, the crew likely transported out or are dead. I haven't seen anyone else," The Doctor said looking around for a lever of some sort, "but I'm here, so, it could be worse. Just try not to regenerate; I've got to get you free first or you're just going to burn out." The Doctor looked at his tablet. The bowship's schematic was glowing in front of him. Something caught his eyes; he smiled. "Bingo!"

"What?" The soldier looked up at the Doctor, wincing.

"I'll be right back, if you're lucky I can get you out of here." The Doctor said smiling and turned and ran. Around the corner there was a junction box on the floor. In the box were two spheres. The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver. He removed the spheres and turned and ran back to where the soldier was. The soldier's eyes were closed his face was soft his chest wasn't moving. The Doctor reached down and opened one of the soldier's eyes, the pupils didn't respond to the flashlight. "No, not now, hold on!"

The Doctor scrambled to jam the spheres under the pylon. He looked back to the soldier and grimaced. He saw the glow beginning; the miracle was burning to get out. The Doctor reached down and touched the soldier's forehead. He winced as he felt the pain ripping through is fingers up his arms and through his spine across his entire body.

"You can't…now…" The Doctor growled fighting the young man's biological responses. "Just enough to make him conscious…come on…pull it back…you can do it, they taught you how to do this in field training!"

The soldier screamed, jerking up from his waist. He grabbed the Doctor's head and stared at him upside down.

"You're him!" The soldier shouted.

"Yes, shh, now." The Doctor whispered, as he gently lowered the soldier's back to the ground and extracted himself from the soldier's grip. "Just hold still, in a few seconds this should be all over." He flicked his screwdriver at the spheres he'd stuck under the pylons. "You're lucky; a pair of emergency gravity spheres survived the crash. I've reversed the polarity in them, should be enough to get this off of you."

The spheres pulsed and hummed and slowly the pylon lifted up, shrapnel and debris rained down on the Doctor and the soldier. The Doctor hovered over the soldier, shielding him from the falling material. The scene beneath the pylon was worse than he'd thought. He was surprised that the soldier had survived at all, never mind held back the regeneration and stayed conscious. Gently, the Doctor slowly extracted the soldier from under the pylon, pulling him free. Seconds later the gravity spheres overheated and exploded bringing the pylon crashing back to the ground. The Doctor lifted his arm shielding himself and the soldier from the fallout.

The soldier looked at the Doctor. "Shouldn't I be…" The soldier coughed violently, blood and sputum splashing forward. His eyes were becoming wild and confused. The soldier looked around feverishly. "What did you do!?"

"Hold still!" The Doctor shouted, as he scanned him with the tablet. He took a deep breath as he saw the results on the screen. "It went too far…the regeneration is stalling out." He swallowed. "You've never done this before have you?"

"What's happening, what do you mean stalling out!?" The soldier half screamed half cried.

"Have you regenerated ever before?" The Doctor responded sternly. The soldier's body started to convulse, his eyes started to wander about randomly under no conscious control. The Doctor reached forward and held the young man's face in his hands gently yet firmly. "Take some breaths, I know it's hard, but take some breaths look at me, stay with me. You've stopped the regeneration, in mid-cycle."

The soldier grabbed control of his body and stared at the Doctor. The soldier's face was racked with terror. "Am I going to die?"

The Doctor looked away from the soldier. He was thinking a thousand thoughts. You could hold back regeneration, you could slow it down but you could never full-on stop it. Time Lord physiology never was built to stop regeneration once it was started. The shock would kill. He looked back to the soldier, whose face was scrunched up; he was trying to hold back the pain of it.

"Listen to me." The Doctor leaned in close to the soldier. "You aren't dying today. Not now." The Doctor caressed the soldier's cheek. "Now look at me, and concentrate. I'm going to try and restart your regeneration cycle. You need to follow my lead, I'll give it a little push and then the process will begin. You need to let it happen, don't hold back, when you feel it coming just relax and let your body take over. I don't know if you could survive it if you stopped it a second time."

The Doctor sat up, and leaned back and crossed his legs. He had never been very good at regenerating himself. He'd shot for ginger seven times and never hit his mark, never came close. Half the time he came out of it in such a mental fog he couldn't remember who he was or what was going on and hallucinated for several minutes or hours before finally being right in the head. However, he knew he needed to do this. He'd seen it done a long time ago, he'd been the subject of this kind of procedure once before.

He took a deep breath and put his hands together. He closed his eyes and concentrated, remembering the feelings he had the other times he'd regenerated. He could feel the warmth of the energy building in his palms. He opened his eyes and looked down at the soldier. The young man looked terrified but was holding still, military training undoubtedly. The Doctor slowly opened his hands and slowly placed them on the young man's torso. He felt the transference, the flow of energy. He felt the kick as the boy's body jolted. The Doctor immediately kicked himself away from the soldier as the boy's body started to tremble and shake and the regeneration began.

The fire of the miracle exploded into the corridor. The soldier screamed. The Doctor knew that scream, the primal rage of death and pain and loss. The brain trying to comprehend itself as the entirety of it was tore down and rebuilt, new neurons latching onto other new neurons, none of which could quite comprehend what was going on. It never was pleasant; at least he'd never experienced a pleasant regeneration.

The fires dimmed, the light faded, and the soldier's body fell limp from its contortions. The new body was shorter, still slight of frame. The hair was blonde, the skin was tan or olive, the lighting wasn't the best. He was whole though, the legs were shifting beneath his new trim waist. The Doctor sat back against the bulkhead wall and sighed in relief. It had worked.

The Doctor slowly moved towards the soldier. "Everything will be alright now. The worst is over. Give yourself a few minutes, and then use that time ring you have on your sash. It should be programmed to send you to the nearest Time Lord base. You'll be fine."

The Doctor stood up, slowly and started to walk away. He was going to look for parts elsewhere. Somehow it felt, wrong. He got to the end of the corridor when he heard the whine of energy. He stopped and turned around.

"I'm sorry, sir." The soldier was standing. The Doctor could make out the soldier's silhouette from the glow of the staser pistol. The Doctor hadn't seen the holster on his left hip; it had been obstructed, he hadn't noticed it when he pulled the soldier free, he'd been focused elsewhere. "Please, stay where you are."

The Doctor straightened up and lifted his hands slowly. "There's no need for this. I'm just going to go on my way. You never even have to acknowledge that I was here."

"I'm sorry, sir, but under Rassilonian edict 307, you are a Class A-1 fugitive of the Time Lord High President, I have to bring you in and impound your TT-capsule, sir." The soldier said. His voice was thread-like and wavering. His new vocal cords and his brain's memory centers were still trying to agree as to what he should sound like. "I appreciate that you saved my life, sir, but you have to know that I can't just let you walk away. You have vital materials that could help us win the war. If I let you go, what's to stop what happened to me from happening to someone else? My brethren, my fellow soldiers, are dying out there and you have what we need to win the war."

"I won't go." The Doctor replied sternly. "You will have to kill me, I won't return to Gallifrey under these conditions. I'm working on a solution. I need more time!"

"More time!?" The soldier walked forward, the staser pointed at the Doctor, he walked into a shard of light that had appeared when Doctor had freed him and the pylon had crashed back down. His face was contorted in anger and tears. He glared at the Doctor with brilliant green eyes. "This war has been going on for centuries now. The universe is falling apart! The Daleks have taken so many of my comrades' lives. My friends, my family have died, and died and died in this war!" The soldier took a deep breath and looked away ashamed and then looked pleadingly at the Doctor. "I have been forced to do things, for the sake of survival and for the sake of our mission. I have killed innocent people, Doctor. I have launched attacks on neutral worlds to change the timelines in our favor. Rassilon says he can end the war if you are brought back to Gallifrey."

"Rassilon lies." The Doctor said pursing his lips. He looked stealthily down at his jacket pocket and tried to calculate if he could get the sonic screwdriver out before the soldier could shoot and decided that would only exasperate the situation. He looked back to the soldier. The soldier was slightly shaking, holding the pistol with both hands. The Doctor took a step forward, the soldier took a step back but never lowered the weapon. "You said you had to do horrible things, don't you see that Rassilon is as much a monster as…"

"Don't you finish that sentence!" The soldier growled, and retook his position moving closer to the Doctor. "Rassilon saved Gallifrey. When the Daleks started their bombardment of the citadel it was Rassilon who rallied the court guard. It was Rassilon who fortified the Eastern mountain defenses. It was Rassilon who led the forces that repelled the Supreme Dalek's elite brigade across the foothills of Mount Solace! Where were you?"

"I was cleaning up Rassilon's mess; I was trying to stop this war!" The Doctor growled. He didn't care anymore he started to stalk forward. The soldier flustered in the face of the Doctor, backing away but trying to maintain control of the situation pointing the staser; but he didn't fire. "I may not have been on the battlefields of Gallifrey but I was out in the universe trying to find a way avert this hell that we live in! I talked the Navarinos into launching the Fifth Campaign at the Gates of Elysium! I tried to capture Davros before the Nightmare Child consumed his battle saucer!" He continued to stomp forward five more feet, four more. The soldier staggered back but hit the bulkhead. "I stopped the Dalek's usage of the block transfer matrix at Arcadia…Don't dare imply I haven't seen my share of horrors, haven't seen the monstrosities out there!" He was within arms' reach. He lashed out and grabbed the staser. The soldier fought him, as he struggled for control. The Doctor wrested the pistol from the soldier's hands. The Doctor looked at the pistol and then looked at the soldier. He said more gently. "You shouldn't point a gun at someone unless you're going to use it."

"You're wanted alive." The soldier glared back at the Doctor and then clenched his fists and pivoted forward.

"Don't!" The Doctor said, swinging the pistol up and pointing it at the soldier, and the soldier froze. The Doctor caught the look in the eyes of the soldier, and then twisted the pistol back at himself. The Doctor took a step back. "If you make another move like that, I'll shoot myself. At this range the staser bolt will kill me before the regeneration cycle can begin." With his free hand the Doctor reached into his jacket and pulled a fob watch from his vest. "This is a bio-monitor. If I die, it sends a message to my TARDIS that will initiate a program that sets a randomizer and activates the dematerialization circuit. She'll disappear into the chaos and shutdown; you'll never find her. If I die all those secrets Rassilon wanted will disappear forever! Now, activate your time ring, forget that I was here. If anyone asks, just make something up."

The soldier stared at the Doctor for a few minutes. The Doctor held firm the staser pistol pressed against his temple, staring straight back at the soldier. The soldier put his hands on his sash and pulled the ring from the clasps. He grasped the ring and the jewels started to glow and he disappeared in a fuzzy haze of light.

The Doctor took a deep breath and fell back against the bulkhead and slid down to the ground. He stared at the pistol in his hands. He was lucky the soldier was a rookie. A more experienced soldier would've called his bluff. He wondered if he could've gone through with it. He looked at the sharp framed weapon. He knew the answer, the truth underneath all of his bluster. His jaw tightened as he narrowed his eyes and then flung the gun into the shadows of the wreckage. He slowly got himself back onto his feet, there was a light beeping noise coming from his satchel, the tablet announcing that ships were breaching the planet's atmosphere. He slowly weaved his way towards the exit, and slipped out of the bowship as the first Shansheeth vessel burned towards some safe landing ground. He'd have to go somewhere else to find the parts he needed.


	4. War

** War**

**88888**

This was Sontar, the center of a massive space empire of stout warriors whose only desire was to fight in a glorious war. The world was dense, with approximately six times Earth's gravitational force but having only the diameter of Earth. Half the universe believed these facts explained the belligerence of Sontar's denizens, after all the gravity forced the Sontarans to be dwarfish, trollsome, and everyone knows the kind of chip on the shoulder that can be created when you are forced to look up at every ambassador you meet. This war-like nature eventually resulted in the need to replace the constant fatal casualties far quicker than consenting adults could, and quickly and unilaterally the entire society became constructed from clones.

At the center of this world, in the center of this society, there was an imperator, there always was. This imperator was always a general, because a war world needs its general. However, the imperators quickly found out that the position came with far more paperwork than shooting and commanding. General Sontar: Grand Imperator of the Sontaran Empire, Prime Consul of the Grand Strategic Council, Warrior Supreme, Clone King of a Million Star Systems, sat at his desk. He of course wasn't the first General Sontar, he was around the billionth, being from a clone race meant that when the Imperator died, either of old age, or some other reason the Grand Strategic Council simply plugged in a new batch of gene material, printed out and force-grew a new Imperator and gave him the same name as the one prior, no one noticed, and the war went onward. The general grumbled as he signed appropriation requests for the Fiftieth Sontaran Advanced Guard for the construction of a hundred new war wheels for the taking of Havarah arm of the Colcept Galaxy. The Grand Strategic Council believed a Rutan scouting party's activities in the area warranted a full-scale occupation of the region. Just another day for the General as he looked over status reports and troop movements and after action debriefing; or rather he thought it was, that is until the sirens went off.

"What is the meaning of this!?" The general leaned back to look up at the flashing mauve lights in his office. "If Colonel Stivix is having another damned emergency drill…I'll have him on medical detail so fast he'll wish…"

History doesn't know what Colonel Stivix would've wished for, as the door to General Sontar's office flew open and a man strode through the entrance, slamming the door shut behind him. The man flicked his right arm, slipped a metal rod from his sleeve into his hand and the device whirred as the door's locking mechanism clunked loudly. He was tall, though admittedly everyone was tall by Sontaran standards, let's for brevity's sake just say the man was on the far side of five foot and nearing six foot. He had shortly cut, thin but curly hair. The man wore a green jacket and a blood-red vest, and simple trousers. Admittedly none of that was noticed by the general, Sontarans in generally have no sense of hair or fashion, but historians have pieced that this is what the man looked like in general.

General Sontar jumped to action, or rather slid off of his chair and grabbed the rheon carbine rod that always leaned against his desk. He pointed the rod at the intruder, but the intruder simply flicked his wrist and pointed the metal device in his hand at the rod. The device whirred and before the general could activate the charged particle emitter the rheon carbine rod burst into flame. General Sontar roared, throwing his weapon to the ground (it never got be used in the field even) and scrambled onto his desk before launching himself across the room at the man. The intruder stepped to one side of the projectile imperator as he sailed past, and whilst doing so the intruder smashed his fist into the general's probic vent.

"Imagine that…General Sontar keeps cookies in the top shelf of his desk, bah, coconut." A voice wafted into the general's auricle as he slowly awoke.

The general was woozy. He'd never been hit in the probic vent before. He grunted as he tried to lift his hand to the vent to check for damage. This action is what properly woke him up, his arms were constrained. He struggled and looked down to find his arms tied to a chair from his office. He looked up. The intruder was looking at a holographic projection that hovered over his desk. The general narrowed his eyes as best he could and growled.

"What is the meaning of this!?" The general struggled further twisting as best he could, but found himself incapable of freeing himself. "Do you know who I AM!?"

"General Sontar: Grand Imperator of the Sontaran Empire, Prime Consul of the Grand Strategic Council, Warrior Supreme, Clone King of a Million Star Systems." Replied the man nonchalantly as he pressed a button on the general's desk and dispelled the hologram. The man looked up at the general. "You may need to change that warrior supreme bit though, since I bested you in single combat in what I believe was one minute thirty seconds."

"I am not yet defeated!" Roared the Sontaran as he struggled violently in his bonds, and then the chair fell over on its side. "As soon as I free myself from these cowardly bonds I shall shred you into strips of Balfoosian bacon and consume your remains!"

"Very much doubt that." Said the man calmly. "Those 'cowardly bonds' are constructed of white-dwarf alloy, picked them up at the port, when I got on world. You aren't getting out them until I let you out."

General Sontar heard the man walking towards him and then felt the chair right itself. The man was now standing in front of him.

The general sneered in annoyance. "My security forces will…"

"Nope." The man said, as he took a few steps back and leaned against the general's desk. "As we speak the vast majority of your personal guard is asleep. Fed a bit of a Sontaran sleeping agent into the conduits, the others are chasing their tails trying to find a Rutan landing party that doesn't exist. You see, I came to speak to you."

"HA! Interrogate me all you want, Rutan spy, I will never break!" The Sontaran felt smug about this, it was the first time he'd been in a position to talk defiantly to an enemy in person. He felt it went well.

"I'm not a Rutan spy." The man said, folding his arms over his chest. "Good thing, too, you have a laughably easy to crack password system." The man was quiet a second and then stood up. "Do you know who I am?"

"It doesn't matter who you are!" The Sontaran growled. "All I know is that you are a coward, who ties me up, denying me the glory of defeating an enemy, and then talks. If you are an assassin, kill me, so I don't have to endure this prattle; if a spy, torture me to gain information so I can gloriously deny you."

"I am the Doctor." Said the man quietly.

The Sontaran didn't say anything. He growled menacingly. "You are the face changer that has been a thorn in our side for centuries!"

"I do what I can." The man said shrugging. "Admittedly, I've been a thorn in the lateral membranes of the Rutan Host's queen for as long. I don't tend to take sides in these things, as long as you are only hurting each other, who is it for me to get in the way."

"Typical Time Lord weakness, unwilling to fight, only talk!" The general snarled.

"And yet…" The man took a deep breath and reached back, pressing a button on the desk. A hologram flickered into life displaying maps and explosions and armies. "I believe you're familiar."

"My council has been monitoring the situation." General Sontar said. "We're looking for a point to launch our own fleet into the fray."

"Don't." The man replied, flashing a glare back to the general.

"Ha! How could we ignore the greatest military campaign in the history of the universe!" The general retorted straining against his chains. "And you're appearance here will cement our entrance, when my generals see through your tricks, we will capture you, and confiscate your TARDIS and use it to launch a magnificent strike at both Daleks and Time Lords, opening a third front in the conflict!"

"Capturing me won't help you, I've been out of the loop and the Time Lords and Daleks equally want me removed from action." The man said, he walked around the general circling him like some kind of large aquatic predator. "And my TARDIS isn't here; I snuck onto the planet via one of the ships you've been contracting for supply transport, and trust me, you won't find it, not even the Time Lords could find my TARDIS."

"Then we'll take what we can from your flesh." The general said sitting back in the chair. "The technology we could gain simply from your biology would give us at least an advantage against our hated enemy."

"It all comes back to that, doesn't it?" The man said, standing in front of the general, he turned his back on the general leaned forward and pressed a button on the desk. The hologram shifted displaying reports from the front line. "It's not going well again, I see. You've lost twenty percent of your holdings in the last century."

"LIES!" Shouted the general.

"Fact." The Doctor said, turning back to the general. "I'm telling you here and now, that if you enter the Time War, the Daleks and the Time Lords will tear through you like a sword through tissue paper, and the Rutans will finish you off. You'll be the last General Sontar, ever."

"You gravely underestimate us, Doctor!" the general growled clenching his three-fingered fists. "If you've come here, to scare us into not joining the fight then you can tell your Time Lord president that you have failed!"

"I figured you'd say that." The Doctor said, sighing. He took out the little wand from his jacket pocket and pointed it to the desk. The hologram shifted once more. "I'm not here under orders; I'm here for a specific purpose, my own." The Doctor moved to one side revealing more of the hologram. "I'm a pariah, I've renounced the Time Lord society and now I'm a free-lance of sorts."

"Traitor, on top of being a coward you commit treachery against your own species, if you were a Sontaran you would be killed and your gene line would be purged." The general growled.

"I support neither side in the conflict. I am on the universe's side." The Doctor replied, he pointed at the screen. "You must be aware that the universe is falling apart. You're just barely capable of it, but you must see it."

"This fact makes our entering the war even more honorable. We have to protect ourselves." General Sontar returned.

"You won't make a difference…" The Doctor replied, "Which brings to my reason for being here. There is a way you could make a difference." He pointed at the hologram. "This is the Gin-Siangh cluster; it is heavily populated by billions of peoples. It is also the site of the Time Rift in the Gidrah system. It is quickly becoming the new front line of the Time War." The Doctor sighed quietly to himself. "I need you to evacuate this region."

General Sontar blinked, staring at the Doctor for several minutes and then started to laugh hysterically. After a few minutes of his deep barrel-chested laugh, the Sontaran snorted. "If you want this done, do it yourself."

"I can't." The Doctor replied, he turned and pointed at the screen, a red line circled the region. "As I said, I'm a pariah, this region is under so much monitoring that my TARDIS can't get within a hundred million parsecs of it without the whole region exploding as the Daleks and Time Lords race to capture or kill me." He turned back to the general. "That's where you come in. I can't get in there and do anything, but the Sontarans can, they are generally below the threshold of concern of either side. You're not a threat and if you start shuttling people out, so what?"

"You ask for our assistance and then insult us! Never mind the insult of request!" The general grumbled. "If this is so-called diplomacy, I think I prefer war. If this is all you are here for, then leave…"

"I really was hoping that for once I could meet a Sontaran who wasn't so blood-thirsty and belligerent that they could see the opportunity as it presented itself." The Doctor sighed, bowing his head slightly.

"Opportunity? We are not slaves to you, we don't help other races, we subjugate them; we use them until they have no utility!" Sontaran said proudly.

"And look at what that's gotten you!" The Doctor implored, he flicked his wrist and the hologram jumped back to the reports on the Sontaran-Rutan war. "Your civilization is collapsing, you're slowly going extinct!" The Doctor shook his head. "Why do I even bother, you'll never see the benefits." The Doctor leaned against the desk. "Imagine the power you could have if the entirety of the Gin-Siangh cluster owed you a debt of gratitude. Imagine if, a Time Lord owed you a debt of gratitude, if I owed you a debt of gratitude."

The Doctor watched General Sontar. The general grimaced slightly, and looked side-long at the Doctor. "Gratitude gets us nowhere. We need new weapons, technology, power. Not a batch of sniveling weaklings thanking us!"

"Ok, fine then, let's move to my back-up plan." The Doctor said, he pointed his device at the desk and the hologram shifted. "You lot just got a shipment of food stock, that's been distributed across most of the planet, right?"

"I will not divulge…"

"Yes, yes, yes, you can't divulge military operations…" The Doctor replied, waving off the general's reply. "Let's just take it as true. The thing is, I got to your supplies first, and you really won't like me to get a hold of things without your knowledge, because I'm very likely to do something like this…" The Doctor's device whirred again and the hologram shifted from a supply ship into the vessel and the drums of feed-stock solutions. It zoomed in deeper and deeper before finally small flickering bubbles were visible. "Each of these bubbles is a nanite. Each of these nanites are programmed upon my command to activate, come out of temporal orbit and start converting your food stocks into Coronic acid."

"Then you are a fool." The general said with a smile. "You've given us your only leverage. We will simply remove the nanites."

"You haven't got the technology. The nanites are fixed in temporal orbit, you can't touch them, and furthermore you've already started mixing the contaminated stocks with what supplies you currently have. The nanites are designed to reproduce, and resist removal." The Doctor said, sitting on the general's desk, leaning his hands on his knees. "You don't help me, I turn all of your food supplies on Sontar into deadly, deadly poison, and you can't survive the time it will take to bring in more supplies, and even if you could, the nanites will persist in your supply stocks until I say otherwise. These food stocks are the basis of that energy regeneration system you utilize, and the nanites will eventually get into the entire empire's supply network. So, you can either die in a fit of stubbornness, or you can help me, and save the Gin-Siangh cluster, have my gratitude and the gratitude of a billion species."

"This is cowardice!" General Sontar roared hopping up and down in his chair. "You are no better than those disgusting green pustules! If you think I will accede to this extortion…"

"Fine…" The Doctor sighed and took out a small circular machine, "at least, I won't have to worry about you on top of the rest of the universe falling apart." He lifted his hand, extended a finger and started to plunge it towards the device.

"STOP!" General Sontar shouted. He seethed in rage and barked. "Fine! I shall commit transport vessels to the region. We shall…" General Sontar screwed his face up as if the words were toxic, "assist these peoples, and evacuate them. Maybe we will get into a fight with one side or the other and can justify our atta…"

"Ah, no, sorry, forgot this bit." The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. He walked forward. "No Time War for you, I'm afraid, if I hear a peep about Sontaran brigades fighting in the war I will push the button…your home world will experience a mass extinction. Just evacuate and get out. Got it?"

General Sontar grumbled.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear that?" The Doctor said leaning in.

"We'll bar ourselves from the war and evacuate the civilians." The Sontaran growled.

"Great, this went far better than I hoped." The Doctor smiled and took a step back. He lifted his arm and exposed a band on his arm. "Well, I have a Terreptilian cargo ship to catch, and don't think about shooting it down. If I don't return to my TARDIS at a specific time, it will, well…you'll melt at your next meal."

The Doctor pressed a button on the arm band and disappeared. General Sontar roared and raged and the chair fell over just as his doors busted open and his field marshals rushed in.

"Imperator!" the guards rushed forward.

"GET ME OUT OF THIS CHAIR!" Roared the imperator. "You useless, gill-snipes, chasing ghosts! None of you will ever get promoted! Your gene clans will all have major revisions! FOOLS! YOU LEFT ME HERE WITH AN ASSASSIN! It was only by my own might and splendor that I could repel him after he deviously ensnared me!"

General Sontar raged and roared as his officers freed him, but never explained what had happened. The Strategic High Council never fully understood what had followed the strange events of the day, nor could they figure out why they were sending transport ships to the most far-flung, strategically pointless region of the universe and only to evacuate the populations. They were infinitely more perplexed when General Sontar: Grand Imperator of the Sontaran Empire, Prime Consul of the Grand Strategic Council, Warrior Supreme, Clone King of a Million Star Systems scrapped all military plans for their glorious invasion of the Time War, the grandest war in the history of everything.


	5. History 201

The Library, the largest collection of literature in the universe, it was an entire planet, core to atmosphere, dedicated to being the biggest repository of knowledge in the universe. It was the perfect place to monitor the fall of reality itself. The Doctor was sitting in the history section at a large oak table. He scanned the shelves around him, they'd change and shift on their own, whole shelves and volumes disappearing, then reappearing, the color of the backing changing, the titles shifting moment to moment, different authors different coding. This was not some fancy information technology, some amazing piece of 50th century library science, this was nature now, this was the universe, this was time and history; this was the war playing out on the lower realms of reality.

The Doctor looked around him at the patrons, and they also changed. People would walk by and disappear halfway through the Doctor's field of view, reappear elsewhere but wrong, with changed facial features, different hairstyles. He watched a young girl with her mother in the course of a second the child and mother turned into a son and father, a grandparent and grandchild, a nephew and uncle and a dog and a cat-person. All the while the people (and pet) were unaware of the changes around as history flowed sickly in a splatter pattern of temporal gore and the viscous entrails of time unraveling in chaos.

The Doctor mused on how it must feel to have history shift underneath your feet without having any concept of change. The innocence must be bliss, he surmised silently for a second, and then immediately changed his mind. The ignorance couldn't be bliss; even the temporally insensitive weren't blind. True, initially they would shrug off the changes as faulty memories, as legends and conspiracy theories but eventually paranoia would sink in as causality slowly gave in and events started happening without causes and pterosaurs would appear in the skies of modern cities. Eventually existing would be a nightmare of nonsense, a cacophony of chaos, reality doing what it had to hold itself together, be damned logic and laws of nature.

The universe was always like this on small scales, but now that the Time Lords had abdicated their position of temporal janitors, and started actively tearing reality asunder, big things were starting to happen. Planets would pop into and out of existence, entire star systems, on particularly bad days an entire galaxy would simply fail to have coalesced. The universe can handle the odd person disappearing or dying in the wrong spot, maybe an entire population or city, but a galaxy was too much, and it showed, here in the Library. A whole series of tomes on the Gadrian Commonwealth disappeared, replaced by a quizzical book titled _A Hole in Understanding: The Lack of Civilizations in the Bundra Expanse_. A whole beautiful, peaceful civilization, representing a hundred billion people across a hundred star systems, replaced with a book with a rather pithy academic title, and then in the next moment it was back, as a military empire bathed in the blood of a hundred stars.

It had to stop. The Doctor reached into his bag, and pulled out a small egg-shaped device. He pressed on the top half of the surface. A twisting, warping ball, that wobbled, shifted and changed shapes flashed into existence above the egg. A closer look at the ball exposed that it was an infinite number of strands, tying around each other, intersecting and merging in a trillion impossibly complex ways. He took out a small stylus and very gingerly started to pull at the sphere, poking at it. Each motion caused the ball to change in fundamental ways, sometimes obvious sometimes slight always a change. This was how it had to be done.

He had to find sometime, somewhere some event or set of events that would give him his perfect result. It had to be small; that was the first mistake most made in these sorts of things. You can't take a sledgehammer to history; firstly because the Daleks or the Time Lords would notice, but secondly, because it would create shrapnel in the time lines, with all the unintended consequences. He had to find a set of small events, giving gentle pushes towards a shape that would stop the war, lead to peace, but every time he thought he was close, the whole thing would collapse and spasm into impossible shapes that resulted in either the war changing into something far worse, or resulted in him not existing or in the Daleks becoming the masters of the universe.

"Hello." A woman's voice breached the Doctor's concentration.

The Doctor looked up. There was a woman standing across the table from him. She had dark hair and eyes, overly a cute face with a genial smile and a sparkle in her eye. She was wearing a dress the top was dark, the skirt was red.

"Hello." The Doctor replied, almost coldly.

"What are you doing?" The girl asked, she took a seat on the other side of the table.

"You wouldn't understand." The Doctor said, brushing off the question as he gently poked the sphere, scrolled through the strands.

"Oh, it's just, it looks like a game, like the ones I've seen, like some kind of electronic pick-up sticks." The girl said with a level of pluck in her voice that achieved a grating tone. "I love games and puzzles. Maybe I could help you."

"No one can help me." The Doctor replied, drawing himself lower to try and put a barrier between him and the woman.

"Are you sure, you look frustrated, maybe a new set of eyes and I can help you to the next level?" The girl shifted her head returning to the Doctor's field of view, she was smiling pleasantly.

"I'm sure you can't help." The Doctor sighed, he looked up sharply trying to send and annoyed message to the girl who was having nothing of it. Her dark eyes twinkled. He narrowed his eyes. "If you could even understand this, you couldn't help me."

"It'd help if I knew what you were doing." The girl chirped happily.

"I'm trying to find a point in history to re-write, that will fix the current state of affairs." The Doctor said almost flippantly. "I'm using a quantum configuration simulator to see what tweaks in the shape of causality will result…and unfortunately I'm not being very successful. Do you think you can help?"

"Oh, that's an interesting machine. Very quaint." The woman said. The Doctor suddenly realized that she was next to him. The Doctor grumbled, looking over at her, in her dark top and red skirt. The dark hair fell over her shoulders. She smiled again and pointed to a strand that was highlighted by the Doctor. "What about that one there."

"Davros getting a balloon as he watches a Thal nuclear detonation over his city; isn't likely to change anything." The Doctor said dismissively.

"Are you sure?" The girl said, her voice was upbeat.

"I really don't think…" The Doctor turned in annoyance to look at the girl full-on. He looked at her, taking everything in. "You've not changed."

"Excuse me?" The girl said, looking in surprise.

"Everything in this library is changing, shifting as the war changes history. The books, the patrons, the paintings, even the lamp fixtures, everything is in flux, except for me and you." The Doctor said, as he quickly snatched up the simulator, shutting it off and pocketing in his green coat. "That can only mean you're what…a Time Lord, a Dalek agent? You're definitely part of the war, you're fixed in a superior temporal state that's for sure."

The young woman giggled lightly. "I'm not a Time Lord."

The Doctor slid the chair he was in, backing away from the girl, apprehensively.

"I'm not a Dalek agent either." The young woman laughed a bit at the reaction.

"Then who are you?" The Doctor growled, uncomfortable, looking around himself.

"I don't think I have a name, at least not one here." The girl said smiling. "Names are such an ephemeral thing anyways."

"I see." The Doctor said, relaxing slightly. "What do you want?"

"To see it for myself, one last time, Doctor." The young woman replied. "There are many who are hoping, but you're tired, and running out of options." The woman reached forward and clasped the Doctor's hand, cupping hers around his. "It must be so hard. The universe is falling apart, eternity is cracking around the seams, and you have to live in it. You are struggling so hard, so valiantly, but you've already come upon the solution haven't you?"

"I've run thousands of simulations, rendered thousands of configurations." The Doctor admitted, looking in the young woman's eyes. He took a deep breath and shook his head looking away from her. "There has to be another way."

"We've strode all of eternity, Doctor, searching for relief." The woman released the Doctor's hand and gently ran her hand through his hair. "There is only despair left. We have watched from afar, the brutality and the cruelty. The screams and nightmares of every ephemeral cry out to us. We can no longer bear this."

"Are you joining the fray then?" The Doctor asked, looking up at the woman. "I know you fought in the old times, you intervened in the blood wars. If the Eternals…"

"No, we won't fight." The woman said quietly. "The Eternals have decided to leave reality."

"Flee? You're going to run away?" The Doctor growled, pulling away from the woman's grasp. "You won't even bother!? I thought I was selfish, but at least I have been trying!"

"And you will end the war, save the universe, but you won't like it." The woman replied, sitting up. "In the end even the good man will go to war, in rage and disgust he will stride into combat and the universe will shake, when a good man goes to war."

"I will never fight." The Doctor retorted. "I won't fight. I help where I can; I'm trying to find another solution."

"Never say never, Doctor," The girl replied, and gave him a demur smile, "especially to an Eternal." The girl looked around her. "History can't take the stress."

"Help me." The Doctor said, he looked at her; his blue eyes pleaded to her. "I can't do this alone, everything I do…it's never enough, never seem to do any good, but if I have your help, with your new perspective."

"It's not my place." The girl replied, shaking her head.

"Then why did you come here!?" The Doctor snapped, standing up knocking his chair over. The woman stared at him nonplussed. He pointed at her. "Did you come to taunt me? Goad me into joining the ranks!?"

"I told you, I'm here to bear witness, to see it for myself." The woman stood up, and looked the Doctor in the eye. "I'm also here to give you the privilege of being the last ephemeral in the whole of the universe to see an Eternal." She reached forward and brushed her hand on the Doctor's cheek. "We're leaving, on this day. This day is the turning point, this day the universe screams in agony, and it doesn't stop, it only gets worse from here on out. Can you deny the wails of pain, Doctor? How long can you ignore it?"

The Doctor blinked and the woman was gone. He looked around himself. The shelves surrounding him were empty. He ran to the shelves, dusty as if they had never had books on them before at all. He ran to the end of the shelves and turned the corner. Row after row, the shelves were denuded, there was a tome here, a few books in a series there, but entire shelves were gone. The Doctor pulled out his simulator, and turned it on. His heart sank, he couldn't believe it. The sphere was now a ball of Swiss cheese, enormous holes ripped out of it with whipping tendrils of dead end time. He turned off the machine and jammed it back into his jacket pocket and ran. He had to get to his TARDIS, there were people dying, and they needed a Doctor.


	6. Gates of Elysium

**The Gates of Elysium**

**88888**

The Daleks had invaded the Dronid system or the Drornid system depending on which time-line was asserting itself. The planet existed in a bizarre region of space-time, a region that the time sensitives called the Gates of Elysium. Many believed it had to do with the Time Lord technology on the planet, though others had suggested that it was a nexus point of multiple universes, the entire region a massive time-space scab on the surface of reality. Time flowed in a different way here. TARDISes refused to fly in the region, time vessels would disappear never to return. The nature of the region had largely saved the planet from the initial skirmishes of the war, but a year in the Daleks had decided to utilize Dro(r)nid's star to create a Dalek Eye of Harmony, except this one would be infinitely more powerful, at least on paper, because it would utilize the energy released from shattering the crystallize time fields that surrounded the system, and would make it unassailable.

The Time Lords had mounted a defense, as did just about every time sensitive race in the universe. This was the largest battle yet in the war. Twenty thousand War TARDISes, a thousand bowships created a defensive line around the system in four dimensions. The Monan Host's leviathans were in full force, the Nekkistani had three hundred battleships sitting at the edge of the Gates. The Tharils committed a thousand ships within the region, as they had the most natural capacity to navigate the temporal squalls within Gates. The Sunari arrived with a fleet of battleship that numbered the thousands and with them the Warpsmiths of Phaidon with enough carriers and fighters to turn a small planet into glass.

The Daleks had launched a fleet of fifty thousand war saucers. They were lead by their creator with his own makeshift stellar manipulator on board to create his new power source. The initial strike from the Daleks rushed the Sunari forces, believing they were the weakest link in the defenses and soon the defensive line had been compromised. Reality warped around the battle as ships slipped backward and forwards in time, dog-fighting in the Time Vortex itself. The defenders were losing, the Daleks were far more aggressive, far more insane at this point in the war, and unafraid of the collateral damage as they raged into the Dro(r)nid stary system. That was when the Doctor had arrived.

A massive fleet of Navarino Time Skimmers swarmed the battlefield. Each armed with temporal disruptors and time sheers. The Dalek fleet was forced to slow to deal with the newcomers, except for one ship, larger than the others which continues to rush into the Dro(r)nid system. The Doctor launched his TARDIS into the battle, swooshing between time torpedos, tendrils of N-forms, black hole eruptors, dimensional fold eliminators, rushing towards the Dalek command ship.

He didn't make it. The vessel released its payload. The Dro(r)nid star exploded and then shrunk. The TARDIS was flung backwards as temporal tsunamis smashed outwards from the epicenter. He tried to grab a hold of control as the TARDIS rattled and spun as it was lashed by the random temporal currents. Even within the TARDIS he was seeing images as time within the vessel twisted. He saw Susan as she was before they arrived on Earth; he saw Victoria and Jamie, Jo Grant, Sarah Jane, Adric, Tegan, Peri, Ace, Charlie, Lucie. And then he saw other people, he didn't know, a blonde girl, a dark skinned woman with long black hair, a ginger girl and a man dressed like a Roman, and then a girl with dark hair and dark eyes, she was pointing at a blinking light and looked at him and smiled. He rushed over to the light as the girl twisted into other forms, other people, he didn't recognize, he hit the button under the blinking light and the TARDIS reared, pressing itself into the waves of time, surfing the gravity waves. He took a deep breath and looked up at the monitor.

Davros's ship had been at the eye of the storm. The vessel looked like it was struggling to escape the gravity of the singularity they'd created, but that was impossible, a Dalek command ship had enough power to escape a mass of that size; that was when he'd seen it, the form tearing itself loose, as reality around it had shattered leaving a gigantic hole in the universe. It was vaguely humanoid in form but that, the Doctor knew, was just a common courtesy of his brain trying to take in the horror that he was seeing. Giant leathery wings strained against reality as the creature opened its maw. He knew he couldn't let it escape, and he knew he had to save the command ship.

"It can't be." The Doctor whispered as he saw the enormous form scratching at the seams of reality dragging its bulk into the universe from the outside. The Doctor braced himself against the TARDIS console, he patted the console gently. "I'm sorry, old girl, but you're not going to like this."

He pulled on a level and forced the engines of the ancient machine to throw the ship towards the singularity. The TARDIS shook, the great metal pylons groaned under the external forces of time waves, eddies and general chunks of time and space coming loose from the rest of the universe. Sparks showered down onto the console. The Doctor whipped around the hexagonal panels flipping switches, twisting dimmers, yanking on levers and quickly hitting buttons. The TARDIS jolted again, and the Doctor nearly fell from the plinth that the console stood on as the ground beneath his feet was yanked from underneath him. The time rotor shivered as it lifted and fell. Another jolt, another burst of pyrotechnics, and then the gong.

"Come on, old girl, no need for that!" The Doctor said as he grabbed the edges of the console. The cloister bell chimed again. "I know, I'm sorry, we got too close. We need to get closer though!"

He looked up at the monitor as it rolled around him, he grasped it closely. The saucer was tumbling into the event horizon of the singularity. There was something else though reaching out from the larger tear across reality. The massive maw of it gaped like a cavern in the middle of space. He looked down to the console. He had to get onto that saucer, but it was wobbling, trying to escape its fate, and it was shooting at him. He set the new navigation coordinates, the TARDIS voiced it discontent by jolting angrily in another direction. He wrestled with her controls as she viciously tried to escape. He kept eying the Dalek command ship, it was slipping. The Great Vampire was drawing energy from the vessel, draining its universal drive and zeta reactors. It didn't help that the command ship was firing both at the vampire and at him. The vampire of course simply consumed the fire power like it was candy. The Doctor grabbed for the button that turned on the communication system.

"Davros!" The Doctor shouted, over the static and the explosions.

"Doctor, if you think I have time for your flippancies and gloating now, you are severely misinformed." The gravelly voice returned. The Doctor could hear the Dalek screams and screeches as they were announcing status reports, the ship was falling apart and the Daleks were apoplectic.

"Let me help you!" The Doctor implored. The TARDIS jolted again and the Doctor grabbed the console and grabbed for helmic regulator, flinging her back on course towards the ship. "You need to lower your transcendental shielding, so I can materialize!"

"HA! If you think I'm that stupid!" Davros's voice pierced through the speakers. "As soon as my shielding goes down this beast you have summoned will destroy us! Or the Time Lords will launch their weapons at this ship! No, Doctor, I believe we will continue with our current plan."

"Current plan!?" The Doctor shook his head. "You don't have a plan beyond shoot at it! Tell me, you must know that your power output is collapsing, those shields will come down one way or another, I'd rather it be sooner when I can do something, rather than later! That creature is not affected by your weapons! It's eating your firepower! Do you even know what that thing is!?"

"It matters not!" Davros retorted loudly. "My Daleks will destroy it, and then we will take ownership of this singularity, and WITH THAT POW…"

"This isn't the time for one of your rants, Davros!" The Doctor shouted. "That is a Great Vampire, it will consume your ship and then it will escape from its home reality and rage across the universe, consuming every civilization in its path, draining stars of energy, sucking biospheres dry, and where there is one, there will be others! Davros, you need to shut your reactors down, you need to let me get to you…my TARDIS is designed to resist that thing's ability to draw energy. It has special defenses against it!"

"Then materialize your vessel around the command ship." Davros said, calmly.

"I can't while you're shielded!" The Doctor shouted. "Lower your shields! Let me save you!"

The TARDIS reared angrily, throwing the Doctor to the floor of the console room. His head slammed on the metal surface. He saw stars as the world washed with brilliant colors. He shook his head trying to clear out the cobwebs, and struggled back up to the console. The TARDIS slammed again, he looked foggily up at the monitor as it bounced back and force. He could see a second vampire trying to push its way into reality. This had created a second blast of time eddies and giant quantum discord. He had to get to the controls. The comm.-link was still open.

"Doctor! What are you doing!?" Davros's shouted loudly. "Coward! You FLEE AFTER YOU CLAIM ASSISTANCE! I should have never expected anything more from you!"

The TARDIS flipped end over end, the Doctor lost his footing and barely had the where-for-all to grab the metal pylon as the internal dimensions swung around in random directions. He flung himself at the controls, groaning as his body hit the hard surfaces, and levers stabbed his ribs. His fist clutched one of the knobs on the helmic regulator. He pulled as hard as he could, but the TARDIS refused, the console burst into flames as he heard the engines wheeze to life.

"NO!" The Doctor shouted at the TARDIS. The HADS was activating. "Don't do it! Stop! We have to go back! WE HAVE TO GO BACK!"

It was too late, the TARDIS was shaking apart as it struggled to jump time tracks and escape the vampires and the shattering chunks of reality around the Gates of Elysium. He didn't know where the TARDIS was going. The TARDIS struggled like a large ship caught in a net, shaking as it was diving from time stream to time stream, trying to extricate itself from the Dro(r)nid system. All the while the comm.-link was open.

"I curse you Doctor, I curse you in the name of the Daleks. I will never forget this! When I get free I will use my dying breath to spite you! I will tear reality apart to get my vengeance on you, DOCTOR! IF IT TAKES ME DESTROYING THE UNIVERSE I WILL SEE YOU EX-TERM-IN-ATED!" Davros's voice squealed in rage.

The Doctor could see the command ship sink further and further into the maw of the Great Vampire. The first great vampire in the universe in millions of years reached out into reality. The first child of the lost spaces consumed the Dalek command ship. The nightmarish child then reached out further towards the war fleet. For the first time the entire fleets, the Time Lords, the Sunari, The Warpsmiths, the Nekkistani, the Monan Host, the Daleks, the Navarinos, stopped shooting at each other and directed their full weapon capacity at the monstrosity reaching out for them. For the first time all these races would act together to try and defend the universe from a greater threat. Unfortunately, they would fail. The nightmarish child would rage across the universe, and its brethren would follow it from the gaping wound cut in the Dro(r)nid system, soon there would be thousands of them. The entire region was sterilized. The war fleets were consumed. Not even the Time Lord bowships could stop the vampires. The Time Lords had forgotten how to fight them, and the bowships had been refitted, lacking bolts of steel on board to pierce the beasts' hearts.

The TARDIS flung itself free of the chaos, with a loud squeal of the engines. From a distance of a hundred thousand parsecs the Doctor watched as portions of the galaxy surrounding the Gates of Elysium went dark as the TARDIS continued to flee through time and the vampires washed out into the universe. The communication system picked up the terror and the screams as it picked up millions of communications, the collective sounds of millions of star systems weeping. It was a disaster, and for the first time since the war started the Time Lord wept.

**88888**

**AN: Reminder that these one shots are not in 'chronological order'. IE this one comes very likely earlier than the others. **


	7. Degradation

**Degradation**

**AN Mk1: Some spoilery inferences in this story for some Big Finish audios (kinda, I reshape some of the history)…you've been warned.**

**88888**

"There are concerns of course." The man said, he stood uncomfortably in front of the throne and looked sidelong at the others that fringed the edges of the room.

"I should think so." The woman sitting on the throne said as she looked at the tablet in her hand. She was wearing a dazzling white gone and a large gold embroidered neck frill. She had dark brown hair and sparkling blue eyes. She looked up at the man. "This report's conclusions are horrific, Narvin."

"Madame President, I overviewed the writing of the report," An older man spoke. He sat with the people sitting on the edge of the room in what looked like a jurors' pit. They were all dress in luscious red robes with matching neck collars that became frills that surrounded their heads. "The coordinator's report shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. If what the Celestial Interventionist Agencies figures are correct, we are greatly threatened." He turned to the other's who nodded sagely. "The recent battle at the Gates of Elysium should make crystal clear how weakened our forces are. We have endured two Dalek invasions of Gallifrey now under your administration."

"Which were repelled!" The woman on the throne returned, probably too defensively if she was honest.

"With considerable damage and loss." The older man continued. "Our status is not on sure footing. At this point we cannot take the fight to the Daleks; we can barely defend ourselves if they come again. What is left of our offensive military capacity is limited and damaged, and largely busy attempting to fight the Great Vampires."

"This plan is irresponsible." The woman replied, shaking her head. "The report fails to take into account the collateral damage. Lord Delox, are you suggesting we unleash this plan upon Dalek and innocent alike?"

"Lady Romana, if I may, this is war, there are no innocence. The very children you tried to bring into the academy were carriers of the Dalek virus that nearly destroyed us. The great Temporal Accords that you claimed as a triumph led to the first Dalek invasion of Gallifrey." Delox replied, he clasped his hands together. "Our prior magnanimousness left us open to invasion, to pestilence, and you wish to continue these policies?"

"I believe that we are not yet in such a position of weakness to even start entertaining this, this, monstrous alternative." Romana returned, looking at Delox in the eyes. The old man did not flinch, did not shift, he was too old to be cowed by her. "Never mind the danger of it to ourselves."

"Actually, if I may," Narvin took a step forward, he shifted uneasily as Romana's eyes turned to him, "there would be decidedly little risk to us. We could simply send the lure back in time, and the Great Vampires would follow it straight to Skaro. The Daleks have shown to be quite incapable of defeating the beasts or defending themselves."

"And what happens when the Great Vampires finish with degrading Skaro to a husk?" Romana asked, narrowing her eyes. "What about the surrounding species, the greater galaxy? What will happen then? You'd be dooming billions to a terrible death. Allow me to remind you, Coordinator Narvin, I have actually encountered the Great Vampires before! So I may have some perspective as to the danger they represent."

"We've already taken steps towards reclaiming the needed information to give us victory against the vampires, Madam President." Narvin said, smiling, happy with himself. "We actually believe that we could contain the threat rather quickly. This would provide for us an end of the war with the Daleks without threatening Gallifrey, with limited causalities for ourselves."

"And what steps have you taken then?" Romana said taking a deep breath and looking skeptically at Narvin.

"We have located the Record of Rassilon." Delox said. "After long thinking it lost to time, war and indolence. With the record we will be able to quickly finish off the vampire threat."

"Quickly? The ancient Gallifreyans had enormous losses in the war. It so disgusted them that they vowed never to go to war again." Romana said.

"And yet, we are at war, my lady." Narvin said. "We are again at the brink against a frightful enemy that looks to destroy all life in the universe. This solution will end two threats in one motion. We need the Record of Rassilon, and have made movements to procure the last copy of it."

"Which explains why I had a platoon of stasers pointed at me when I opened my TARDIS doors." A voice shot from the far end of the council chambers. The owner of voice stepped forward a group of ten guards followed him, all holding stasers at the man's back. The other Time Lords stood up in shock, even President Romana. The Doctor strode into the chambers, looking around, hands behind his back. "You realize, that you can just ask for things. I'm willing to assist where I can. My TARDIS doesn't appreciate being yanked across time and space, well, not under someone else's discretion. She's a fussy, old thing."

"Doctor…" Romana said with a smile as she stepped forward from her throne and walked towards him with outstretched arms. She hugged him gently, and waved off the guards, and then stepped back and took a stern face. "What is the meaning of this? The High Council is in session, these are closed door proceedings."

"Nice cover." The Doctor whispered, walking past Romana and looking to the other councilors. "I see that the High Council is still as dusty and old as I remember." He was wearing a green frock coat and a brown vest with golden embroidery and a simple gray shirt and trousers. He walked past Narvin and took a step up the plinth to the throne and plopped lazily into the chair. "Now, what's this I'm hearing about Great Vampires?"

"Sir, that seat is meant…" one of the Cardinals groused.

"I was Lord President, once, Tachen." The Doctor said, bored. He stared at Narvin, but addressed the High Council. "I assume we're finally making an actual move towards re-banishing the Great Vampires to their lost spaces. I hope so, at least. Last figures were that they are multiplying and growing in power. The Fornix corridor has been depopulated, and disgorged of energy, complete entropic collapse."

"Well…" Narvin looked to the High Council and then to Romana. "Eventually…"

"Eventually?" The Doctor looked past Narvin to Romana, quirking an eyebrow.

"You see, Doctor, the Daleks have no adequate defenses against them…" Narvin began; the Doctor threw up a hand stopping him.

"You can't be serious, Romana?" The Doctor said sitting up in the throne. "You know how dangerous the Great Vampires are. You know what kind of damage they are doing to the universe."

"I do not endorse this plan at all." Romana admitted, she walked forward, past Narvin. She gave the council a glance and then looked to the Doctor. "However, it is the council's right to explore any action, we are at war."

"That is not an excuse!" The Doctor growled.

"No, it isn't." Romana turned to Narvin. "The Great Vampires are not a weapon to launch at the Daleks."

"But, Madame President…" Narvin started to re-assert himself.

"No, I will not be the President who unleashes an unspeakable evil upon the universe as a weapon." Romana turned to the Doctor, whilst addressing the High Council. "Winning this war will be done properly. We will not lower ourselves to the Daleks' level. We must acquire alliances, procure more resources, and rebuild our military infrastructure. As I said when I became president, the days of our insularity is over, we can no longer pretend to be apart from the universe, but rather we are a part of the universe. I realize how dangerous that can be, I'm aware of the threat that it has opened us up to, but in the long run reaching out to the universe will only be a positive."

"Lady Romana, it is easy to speak in these morally high-minded terms, but the Daleks will not wait for us to be ready to fight them on even footing, for all we know the Dalek fleets and the Gothic war engines are en route to destroy Gallifrey as we speak!" Delox stamped his cane on the floor of the councilors' box. "We must use every opportunity at our disposal!" Delox glared at the Doctor. "Even if that means fighting dirty, and using morally questionable means."

"If all it takes is one disaster for us to lose our moral center, for us to be willing to do the unspeakable for our own self-service, then I was right." The Doctor said standing up, and stepping down from the throne. His eyes panned over the council. "We are the highest, most mighty civilization in the history of the universe, but we're also beyond decadent and degenerate, we lost our morality somewhere in the intervening millions of years. Maybe we never had a moral center, maybe we were always like this."

"Says the man who has tried to destroy the Daleks with the Hand of Omega, and who has committed genocides. Whose misjudgments and cosmic interference has brought this calamity to our homes." Delox replied, sniffing in disapproval. "Your motives are as dubious as any of ours, Doctor. Whilst we have stood here and endured this war, you have ran away, refused to fight, hidden yourself in safe places."

"Chancellor Delox!" Romana shouted, and turned. Her arms were pressed against her sides, her fists were clenched. "I have known the Doctor…"

"Yes, his contamination is evident, Madame President." Delox interrupted, the other councilors and Narvin gasped, interrupting the president was not done, in the Dark Times it was a crime that could come with the penalty of dispersion. "We've endured the policies that have undoubtedly been gestated by your long-term mission with the Doctor. Or shall we be honest and remind everyone that you were due back immediately after the Atrios incident, and yet somehow you ended up in E-Space for centuries before returning, without leave, without permission, nearly four hundred years AWOL, consorting with aliens!"

"My record is not under review here, Lord Delox! I would also remind you of the decorum of this body!" Romana roared back. She strode angrily to the bench of the council and looked directly in Delox's eyes. "Whilst I was actually interacting with the universe, you and the rest of the council have been quite keen to sit here, and allow dust to settle upon Gallifrey, to turn Time Lord society into a antique to be preserved like some museum piece. I have been fighting to drag Gallifrey into a modern universe!"

"And this has brought war to Gallifrey, a war, if I may remind those of us here, which we are currently losing." Delox replied, taking a deep authoritative breath. "The plan that Coordinator Narvin has provided is a plan that could turn this around. It provides us with an opportunity that we have gravely needed. I move to bring this policy up to a vote, to bring this to policy into action!"

"I will not allow this." Romana said, staring at the other councilors. "I will not let this insanity take hold."

"You don't have a choice, Lady Romana." Delox said. "If the votes are there, I'm afraid there's very little you can do, unless you wish to announce yourself Imperatrix again. I doubt though that the population will have much taste for that a second time."

"I second the motion."

The Doctor and Romana turned. Narvin had his hand up.

"All in favor." Delox called, looking at his co-councilors.

"Aye" said five.

"All against."

Romana, the Doctor, and one other Cardinal raised their hands (the Doctor raised both his hands). Then Chancellor Delox informed the Doctor that he had no voting powers at this meeting. The Doctor reaffirmed that despite that he was still against the motion.

"I further move that we members of the High Council act to circumvent the lower council of Time Lords, under the provisions of the emergency powers of the High Council." Delox said calmly, as he sat down.

"Absolutely not!" Romana glared at Delox. "I invoke my rights to summary veto…"

"We have a super-majority, Madame President." Delox said, in a professorial tone as if he was teaching her back in the academy about the basic rules of parliamentary procedure.

"Then under the emergency executive powers as written down under the war provisions," Romana blustered looking to the Doctor who looked unsure and impotent, "I hear by order the High Council of Cardinals to stand down and adjourn, until further notice."

The Doctor took a step back, moving away from Romana.

"Again, casting yourself as the unassailable emperor of Gallifrey, as dictator." Delox said, as he looked to the other councilors. "You barely survived the last time you tried this, and at that time it was to avoid inevitable political defeat and most of Gallifrey's political elite were killed in the ensuing chaos. The people of Gallifrey are tired of invasion, of disease, of death. Do you really think you can survive the will of the people by force of imperial dictatorship once more?"

"If that is a threat, Chancellor Delox, I suggest you make it good." Romana growled. "I will not allow this plan to go through."

"The vote for action has already been cast; it will go to the lower council," Delox said, quietly, unfazed by the Time Lady's anger, "and when it does, be assured a vote of 'no confidence' will swiftly follow."

"I will never allow the vote to come up. Even if it means I have to disbar the councilors from action." Romana said as she walked to the throne and sat down. She looked to the councilors. "I thought I told you to adjourn, leave!"

The councilors looked at one another and shuffled awkwardly out of the council chambers. Only the Doctor was left in the room. He looked at her. She could see his disappointment on his face.

"You don't approve, I suppose." Romana said, sitting imperially on the throne.

"Of the idea of using the Great Vampires as weapon to destroy the Daleks?" The Doctor asked, placing his hand behind his head and rubbing the back of his head, "Or, the idea of you naming yourself the tyrant ruler of the Time Lords?"

"I did what I had to; you know what would've happened." Romana said, crossing her legs and placing her hands on the armrests of the throne. "Delox is unfortunately right. The Time Lords are scared, after the Daleks invaded and the virus, Gallifrey was nearly on the brink of collapsing completely. The war is not going well, Doctor. Projections from the war council suggest another Dalek attack like the last one will destroy us. The people are not pleased; my allies on the council have slowly started to turn against me. Now, Delox is making motions on the High Council, and he is steadily undermining me and my administration."

"If we lose ourselves to this, though," The Doctor shook his head. "If we lose the basic tenets of our society…"

"When you were president you became a tyrant, dissolved the High Council, became a war dictator." Romana replied, icily, her sapphire eyes burning on the Doctor.

"I was orchestrating a plan against an invasion of Gallifrey." The Doctor replied, returning the gaze.

"So am I!" Romana returned sharply.

"No, this isn't a plan, Romana, this is you clinging to power." The Doctor said. He walked up to the throne. "You can do better."

"No, Doctor, I can't. This is the best I can do, in this situation. I tried being like you, Doctor, but Gallifrey is not interested in a good person orchestrating this war." Romana said; she stood up and proceeded to leave the chambers. "You will hand over the Record of Rassilon, by the way."

"Why?" Asked the Doctor.

"We need it to fight the vampires." Romana turned and looked at the Doctor. "Don't resist, Doctor. We may be friends, but I will not refrain from detaining you and dismantling the TARDIS if necessary."

The Doctor nodded silently, clearly cowed, looking to the ground. Romana turned to leave.

"You realize, that I am only agreeing to this, because you are my friend." The Doctor said, straightening up, and clutching the lapels of his jacket. "If you were Hedin or Borusa, or anyone else, I would never allow you to take it, under these circumstances. I trust you, Romana, I trust you will use it for a good reason." The Doctor walked forward, walked past Romana towards the open doors. He cocked his head back and looked to Romana. "Don't disappoint me, Romana. If you think Delox is a difficult enemy, don't disappoint me Romana."

The Doctor turned the corner and disappeared down the corridor. Romana slouched; she knew precisely how dangerous the Doctor was when he was 'disappointed'.

**88888**

**AN Mk2: Again, reminder that these one shots are in no particular order. Basically they come as I think of them and write them. **


	8. What He Saw

**What He Saw**

**88888**

The whoomfs of battle were distant as Time Lords and Daleks wrestled in the sky and in the distant fields. The Doctor grasped the young girl's hand and poked his head out of the remains of the house they had been hiding in. The war had come to Tressail. For centuries now it had been the refuge, but the as the rest of the universe fell apart the scraps of stable time and space had become fewer and farther apart and Tressail was now strategically valuable. Fortunately most had escaped before the battle proper had started, and now only there was only the stragglers and the left behind.

The Doctor looked back to the girl and flashed a smile. Her face was smudged with mud, and her hair was filled with muck. Her hair must have been at one point blonde, and her eyes were a soft brown. She wore a tattered blue dress that had at one time had lovely frilled edging. He'd found her in the debris of the building they were now hiding in. She had been hiding under a table, crying, silently. When he had approached her she retreated away from him and it had taken him several minutes to convince her that he wasn't one of the soldiers in the war. He asked where her mother and father were, but her face when the question was asked was all that was needed to answer the question. She was an orphan and alone amidst the fire and the wild.

"I have a magical box that will take us away from all of this." The Doctor said, he knelt down to her level and gently place his hand on her head. "All we have to do is get to it. Do you trust me?"

The little girl nodded slowly. He could see the fear in her eyes. It was warranted. The war was destroying her home, had killed her parents, and now it was aiming to finish her family off.

"We have to go quickly, though." The Doctor looked back outside. "My box is a few blocks away, it'll be like playing a game, like chasing." He turned back to the child. "So we need to run, can you run?"

The little girl nodded.

He smiled; he licked his thumb and cleared away a smudge of mud from her cheek, revealing the pearlescent skin underneath. He gripped her hand tightly. "When I say 'run', run, and don't let go for anything."

And with that they were in the streets. The Doctor was jogging and the girl sprinting held together by their grip. He could smell the smoke and the death and the ozone, the smell of a war that was going bad. He could hear the screams of soldiers and the shriek of Daleks, and the moans of the innocent trapped in between. The street was littered with vehicles and remains of buildings.

He pulled her behind a slab of concrete. There was a flash and an explosion the concrete shook cracked against them and chunks fell to the ground around them. He drew the girl under his jacket, shielding her from the rubble. He quickly asked if the girl was injured, to which she shook her head, 'no'. He took a deep breath and looked over the concrete. The artillery must have been a stray from the battle, the street was clear. He grasped the girl's hand and told her to get ready, and then they ran again.

The rolling thunder of bombardment was getting closer. The front line must have shifted. The Doctor's boots pounded the broken pavement. He turned a corner and kept running. Only a couple of more blocks left. He could see the TARDIS in the distance, wafting into and out of vision through the smoke and the dirt and the flashes of explosions in the sky. He looked back down at the girl and smiled, they were almost there.

And then he tripped. The Doctor's foot caught a rock in the street at a bad angle. He pitched forward and rolled. His hand pulled from the girl's hand. He struggled to his feet, clambered to get up right to he looked up, and his face paled, and then he heard it.

"EX-TERM-IN-ATE!"

"NO!"

The bolt of energy flew from the gun stalk, blue-green k-alpha radiation thrust itself through the girl's chest, lifted the child off the ground and flung her several feet. Her limp body rolled into a pile of twisted buildings and ambulances. He rushed to her, hoping beyond all logical hope; he gripped her arm and wrist. He held her body, broken in his arms, clutching her against his chest. He screamed loudly and then he looked up.

Through the smoke and the rubble the burnished copper war-casing hummed forward. The dome turned and the blue light at the end of the eye-stalk, narrowed as it pointed at the Doctor. The rest of the machine turned.

"You – are – a Time-LORD!" the Dalek screeched, the lights on its dome flashing in time to the voice. "You – will – stand - down! You – will – come – with – me!"

"You killed her. She was a child, and you killed her." The Doctor whispered.

"Ir-rel-e-vant!" The Dalek screamed.

"Irrelevant?" The Doctor said; he looked up at the Dalek. He stood up, straightening himself up. "THIS WAR IS IRRELEVANT! I have sat here, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, over and over and over again, watching the Daleks and the Time Lords bashing each others' head against the pavement, in a street fight across time and space, and cleaning up the messes you've all made, tried to help, tried to clear up the collateral damage." He looked straight into the Dalek's eye. "All this senseless, evil killing! She wasn't a threat, she wasn't a soldier; she was a LITTLE GIRL! This was simply murder, and I am done with it."

The Dalek lifted its plunger. The plunger twisted in the air. The Dalek backed up slightly as the readings coalesced into the creature's brain. The eyestalk light widened and stared in the Doctor's eyes.

"YOU – ARE – THE – DOC-TOR!" The Dalek screamed, the terror in its voice coming through the electronic distortion. "YOU ARE THE ENEMY OF THE DALEKS! YOU WILL BE EX-TERM-IN-ATED!"

The gun stalk whined as the energy built up. The Doctor narrowed his eyes. A fluid motion, not even seconds in the making. The sonic screwdriver roared. A sonic pulse fired from the resonator and resonated with the gun stalk. The gun sparked. The Dalek's eyestalk dropped down.

"WEA-PON – SYS-TEM DAM-AGED!" The Dalek shook in rage, brought its eye back to the Doctor. "WHAT – HAVE – YOU – DONE!?" An alarm started to go off. "A-LERT! A-LERT! WEA-PON SYS-TEM COM-PRO-MISED! POW-ER BUILD-UP DE-TECTED! OVER-LOAD EM-IN-ENT!"

The Doctor didn't say anything. He turned calmly and scooped the little girl's body up. He turned towards the TARDIS.

"DO – NOT – MOVE!" The Dalek raged, as the whine of the thwarted gun-stalk raised in pitch. "STAY – WHERE – YOU ARE! DOC-TOR! YOU CAN-NOT DO THIS! RE-CORDS IN-DI-CATE MER-CY!"

"I suggest you update your records." The Doctor said quietly, as he started to walk away.

The Dalek turned, it screamed in its impotence as the Doctor strode away, and then the gun stalk screamed as the k-alpha wave built to critical mass. The Dalek exploded as the Doctor opened the TARDIS doors. He didn't look back, he simply slipped into the vessel, closing the door behind him, and then the ship disappeared.

8888

They say that in the later part of the war a TARDIS landed at the Eye of Orion and a lonely man walked forward onto the Plains of the Soul where the serenity never ends, where the peace is never broken as smoky mists lay down a meditative calm. There is a single grave on the Plains of the Soul, a small stone marker, without a name, without any dates. Only two words were carved into the stone.

"No More"


	9. What She Knew

**What She Knew**

**88888**

He was asleep. The first time in a month he slept. Time Lords didn't need sleep like so many other species, but even for him this was an unusually long time between naps. He had changed. Not physically, not yet, that was coming, but he had changed mentally. She could feel it, like a mother touching her child's forehead she could feel the emotional fever building.

Her vision swept upward and outward and in every direction. The universe was aflame. The time vortex was shattered and bent. She could hear the rage of the war in the distance, the screeching dictation of Daleks, the roaring rhetoric of Rassilon. The universe had gone mad.

She could extend her vision far beyond the tiny asteroid where they were currently hidden. She often did this, if only to look for hope. She had not found any hope though, just the broken bodies of her sisters, bloated and festering in the vortex, torn apart by Dalek weapons or Gothic ingenuity. Almost all of her sisters were dead now; she was one of the last of a dying breed. The remainder that survived now, that were bred in the midst of the war, were not like her or her sisters, they were feral, belligerent, uninterested in their surroundings, only interested in unsheathing their claws and tearing at a target.

She turned her attention back to him. He was turning restlessly in the chair. Tressail was where it all changed, where finally his resolve had failed him. The rage, the fury, it wafted off of him like bad cologne. It was the first time he had hurt her. He'd overcharged the plasmic shell, searing the outer surface, and released a blast of artron energy so powerful that it disabled every vehicle surrounding Tressail. Dalek saucers and Time Lord Bowships hung impotently in orbit, and he had leaned against her console as they left, and he wept, not the saddened weeping of the mournful, or the cries of the fearful, but an angry, primal, raging cry. Tears for his own failure as much as for the small broken child he'd brought with him. He wept for the passage of more than a life. He wept because he had lost his truth, the one thing that he had defined himself as.

So it was that they would land on the Eye of Orion. He had placed the child in the ground, and performed a ceremony. He returned to her once more and lost himself in her labyrinthine corridors. She could sense what he was looking for, and she tried her best to deflect him from the forbidden treasure he had kept all this time, sealed away. He was not to be deterred or thwarted and for the last month he had tinkered, twisted the forbidden thing making it more powerful, more monstrous. He was also changing her. She resisted, but he refused to be hindered by her contrivances.

They crisscrossed reality. No longer were they saving people, no longer were they helping the refugees and the dispossessed, there was no plan anymore, no machinations. In his head, she could hear the rage bellowing in his mind and she knew what was coming. The more he saw the more he became enraged. She could see it coming, the day she had hoped would never come, the day he would lose himself.

He never knew the truth about her. Never known why she was on the junk heap. She had allowed him to believe that she was there by coincidence that she was there because she had gotten old and broken and obsolescent, but that was only half of the truth. The truth was she was there because the Time Lords had placed her there; she was there because they had peered into the future and seen the war, and seen the fall of Gallifrey, and seen her at the center of it.

She'd seen the same thing that the Time Lords had, but more. She had to escape and to take him with her, so when he came she unlocked her doors and let him and his granddaughter in, and then she made her escape, and she never turned back. She knew him, better than he knew himself. She got accustomed to the families he created for short periods, his strays and orphans and the occasional silly robot. She'd watch him change his face, watched him grow old. Now she was watching him sleep.

He needed someone. This was what she knew. His friends and family acted as stabilizers for him. They kept him sane and he had been alone now for so long, centuries since that woman from Earth. His hearts had grown cold and hard and petrified. His hope was lost; buried on the Plains of the Soul. There was only one hope to bring him back from the edge he was walking towards. So she listened, and there it was, a gunship attacked by pirates and crashing. It was in the inner-temporum of Gallifrey near Karn, but she could get there.

She raised the alarm, and he roused with a jolt and looked around. He quick stepped to her console and stared at the scanner, and shook his head.

"Another one…" He said, and moved his hand towards the switch, turning the scanner off.

She would not be thwarted. She had indulged this nihilism too long. She had let him become wronged and angry and filled with rage. She re-directed the transmission to her emergency broadcast system.

"Help me! Please, can anyone hear me?" The voice of a woman came across the speakers.

He looked quizzically upwards and around himself, not entirely sure how the transmission was getting through. She displayed the ship on the holographic projection system over the console. He watched it tumble. He could hear the woman on the ship arguing with the computer. He smirked. She had him now, hooked; this version of him could never ignore a clever damsel in distress. Before she knew it, she was underway, bouncing across the vortex, leaping across space and time rushing after this mad flying rocket that was falling towards Karn. At this moment she would've said, if she could speak, that this was the first truly joyful moment they'd had in decades. He gallivanting after a woman trapped on a burning space ship, she gleefully chasing after it like some slobbering Labrador retriever. However, that was the problem with living in the moment. She should've seen it coming, being a temporally transcendent mind that encompassed all of time and space, but she was too busy being proud of herself. It was too easy to ignore the details when at the moment; her thief was smiling like a school boy.

They were closing in. Final calculations were being made to materialize within the vessel, towards the back. He was snatching his sonic screwdriver and pocketing it. She was pushing herself into the lower dimensions of the universe squeezing her enormity into the shape of a 1960s London Police Box, because well, mostly because she was stubborn and had gotten comfortable in that shape, and also because she'd forgotten what other things looked and felt like. Within minutes he was at her doors and rushing out, gallant and heroic. She had already started mapping the woman, figuring out who this new stray was, the woman was perfect….and then that's when she realized. The details flooded in, and it was too late. She braced herself as she felt the ship tip, she begged and pleaded for him to leave that woman, but she knew him too well, he would do whatever he could to save her, because he was the Doctor and he helped where he could, even if he couldn't help, he would die trying.

In attempting to avoid what would come, she had delivered her thief to his destiny. She had wired herself and her thief into the causal nexus of reality and fixed their position in history. She would lose him, to himself, to the Sisterhood of the Eternal Flame, and she would be witnessed to the most horrific disaster in the history of the universe. Within the deepest part of her matrices, the TARDIS wept.


	10. The Enemy

** The Enemy**

**88888**

"It's his signature." The general said as he handed the electro-paper to the Castellan. "Ever since that night on Karn, this has been his signature on the cosmos."

The Castellan looked at the film in his hands. There was a gaping hole in the middle of the battlefield chaos. Dalek saucers were torn to bits. N-Forms were tied in causal knots that they couldn't extricate themselves from. War TARDISes shredded like tissue paper, their inner dimensions spewing out into the cosmos like water issuing from a popped water balloon.

"Are you sure it is him?" The Castellan said as he looked at the piles of similar films, showing the same scene over and over again.

"It is him. Data records show the signature of a Type 40 capsule, or rather what had been a Type 40 capsule, there are aberrations…" the general replied, as he laid further sheets down. "No visual verification but, then, how could there be."

"It is hard to believe, I have to say, I knew him for years. He is a man of peace, of justice. He is not a warrior." The Castellan shook his head. He couldn't believe the images being shown to him.

"It's worse than that." The general replied, walking around the large table in the war room. His burnished copper armor glowed red, reflecting the interior lights. "They say he's leading an army of his own now, disaffected Time Lords, survivors from the myriad battles, other species he's been allied with in the past. It is said that the Third Rassilonian Heavy Infantry was overtaken by a Battalion of Thal warriors. The remnants of the merchant fleet of the Warpsmiths of Phaidon are being reported as having launched suicide campaigns against Dalek Outposts along the Humanian-Chelonian Era border." The general lifted a remote and pressed a button. A holographic display appeared on the ceiling of the war room. "This new faction is waging a second front near the Planet Heaven. The men are calling it the Second War in Heaven. He has been leading the charges, and we have information that he's been interacting with his past and future…creating paradoxes, revisiting past battles, attempting to change military history."

"But this…" The Castellan said, pointing at the battlefield pictures. "How is he doing this?"

"Somehow he's gotten his hands on a D-Mat Gun." The general said, with a growl. "We thought the weapon lost forever, but somehow this madman has gotten it."

"He's not a madman, I know him, the…"

"He's the enemy now, naming him would only distract from what he's doing." The general circled the table and stood next to the Castellan.

"But the D-mat gun is a very limited weapon, designed to erase an individual, maybe a small military force, from history, not blast solar system sized holes in reality." The Castellan picked up one of the pictures.

"We believe he's plugged the weapon directly into his TARDIS's engines." The general said quietly, narrowing his eyes. "Very dangerous, if the weapon ever backfired, he would tear an ontological hole into reality, the war would twist inside out; reality would crumble."

"Yes…" The Castellan said more to himself than to the general. He scanned the images on the table, and then looked up at the holographic display. "You say he's leading the charges, have you or the other field officers have noted any pattern to the attacks?"

"Unfortunately, no, the attacks come from nowhere and disappear into nowhere soon after, plus the enemy tends to cleanse the field before departing, we assume to clear their tracks." The general said.

"Small picture, general, small picture." The Castellan said. The Castellan shifted the images on the table, putting them in ontological order, and secondarily in positional order. He took the remote in the general's hands and pointed at the holographic image. The image zoomed out and red dots flashed into existence. "Not, random attacks. These ones that the new enemy faction leader has led make a pattern, look, general, look."

The general looked up. Curving lines joined the dots, forming intersecting circles in four dimensions. He recognized the circular structures, as Gallifreyan script twisted four dimenstionally in the air.

"Words…" The general looked back to the Castellan.

"I know him, he was always theatrical." The Castellan said, shaking his head. He read the Gallifreyan words aloud. "No More." The Castellan looked up at the image, something caught his eyes. "But there's more, overlaying the other attacks by the faction, and the paradoxical events of the enemy." The images shifted; the Castellan took a deep breath. "He also was known for grand gestures, the enemy is doing more than attacking our forces, opening second fronts; changing military history is inconsequential to what he's doing. He's altering the structure of the Web of Time. The base foundations of history and time are changing; he's creating a rival Web of Time…"

"To what end?" The general asked. "He must know that we would resist it!"

"How, general? Our entire forces are tied up in holding off the Daleks." The Castellan said as he slid his fingers across an access panel on the edge of the table. The Castellan narrowed his eyes. "Recall all defense forces."

"Castellan…"

"Do it! Reinforce the sky trenches, re-route all power from the citadel's power network to the transduction barriers." The Castellan glared at the general. "I will inform Rassilon of this new information. This Paradoxical Faction is planning to assault Gallifrey directly. The new Web of Time is targeted to eliminate the defenses around the Omega Arsenal. Look, here, the dimensional dams are already starting to erode, the time spiral is collapsing, the temporal baffles safe-guarding Gallifrey's ontology are eroding. You're right, general, giving this enemy a name is to ignore its true nature. This is a fundamental threat not just to Gallifrey, but to the entire war and the remaining universe. If 'The Enemy' gains entry into the Time Vaults he will wield the worst weapons in history, the forbidden weapons of the Dark Times."

"He'll be too late; most of the weapons have been used against the Daleks." The general said, as the Castellan started to leave the war room.

"One weapon will suffice." Replied the Castellan as he continued to the door. He stopped at the door frame and turned back to the general. "The Daleks will notice soon that our defenses are collapsing, general. The war, in all its horror, is coming to Gallifrey. Prepare your men for a full scale invasion of Gallifrey, everything will be coming here, the demons we released from the Shadow Dimensions, the Daleks, and 'The Enemy' will be here."

"How soon…?" The general fumbled, not sure how to interpret this.

"It's a time war, general, 'soon' is relative, they may already be here." The Castellan said leaving the war room.

The general reached down and touched a blue button on the table. "This is General Maxillondiravandrulandru, High commander of Gallifreyan Military Operations, Leader of the War Council, all non-terrestrial forces must return to Gallifrey, immediately, we are officially at triple mauve; I repeat we are at triple mauve. All forces are ordered to return to defend the home-front!"

The general looked up at the screens, and that's when the klaxons started. The images shifted on the ceiling shifted. A fleet of Dalek saucers were in orbit. The ground shook, tremors vibrated through the floor as the saucers started their attack. The general braced himself as the room shuttered. The saucers just kept coming, piling more and more on each other, until they filled the orbital spaces around Gallifrey and the general knew that this was the last day.

The general tapped a button on his gauntlet. "Under general order 17, I authorize the launching of all weapons in the Omega Arsenal, save the final Moment. Pray that we'll never need to use that."

A light blinked near the communication console, within seconds a voice was coming over the speakers. "This is flight control; we are detecting an unauthorized TT-capsule materializing near the city of Arcadia."

"Can you identify it?" The general growled.

"The pilot used old presidential access codes to bypass the transduction barrier, but the owner of the codes is not in the system. We don't know who it is." The flight control officer said.

"The vehicle, can you identify the vehicle?" The general asked, increasingly paranoid and fearful of the answer.

"Computers are trying to extrapolate information from the sensor grid at Arcadia as we speak…that can't be right…"

"What can't be right?"

"The computer says that it's some obsolete model…Type 40s haven't been in service for millennia." The flight controller said. "Must be a fault…"

"It's no fault." The general said, he looked down at the outlaid images on the table, of holes in reality torn by 'The Enemy'. "Dear god, he's here." The general hit the communicator on his gauntlet. "All members of the War Council are ordered to the War Room…all citadel security officers are ordered to the Time Vaults."

New klaxons went off in the war room as the other councilors arrived. The klaxons told the high general what he had feared.

"What the hell is going on!?" one of the councilors roared. "I'm trying to orchestrate a defense. I'm getting reports that the Daleks have penetrated the sky trenches near Arcadia; the population is in chaos!"

"It's him…he's gone mad." The High general growled.

"Who's gone mad?"

"It's the Enemy." The high general responded. "He's broken into the Omega Arsenal."

"A wasted action, we just launched the remainder of the weapons against the Dalek invasion fleet." The councilor said.

" There is one weapon left." Another councilor pointed out. "But the Doctor would never…."

"The Doctor wouldn't, but the Enemy, the rogue that burned off of Karn, would." The high general said. "Inform, the High Council that the man who was the Doctor has the Moment and intends to use it." The high general walked towards the door, turned and pointed at two other councilors. "Come with me, we must check the Time Vaults, and verify the theft. The rest of you, get these Dalek saucers off our backs!"


	11. The Ninth Fold of the Eight-Fold Man

**The Ninth Fold of the Eight-Fold Man**

**88888**

He growled as the TARDIS landed roughly, shaking inside and out. Even with all the work he had done, the Time Lord defenses around the Omega Arsenal weren't fully eliminated. Centuries of work, of leading battles and fighting in the war, he thought he deserved at least this, considering what was coming. His head pounded; a migraine that had slowly been building as he had approached Gallifrey was exploding across his brain.

"Stop it." He mumbled as he pressed against the console.

He knew what it was. He gripped the console as another wave of pain shot through his mind. He pushed away from the console, shook his head hard and then walked towards the TARDIS doors. He reached forward and pressed against the doors and they fell open and he staggered out.

"I dare say, young man, this is quite the state of affairs, hmmm?" A grandfatherly voice said.

He looked up, shook his head, trying to shake the pain and the cobwebs. His vision blurred and then drew into focus in the sterile, white room. Standing before him was the frame of an old man in a black cloak. The old man turned, he had a cane that he braced himself against.

"Bah…" He said as he walked towards another set of doors. The time vaults were partitioned; there were eight sections between himself and the Moment. "I haven't time for this."

"No time? No time?" The older man frowned. "You can make time." The grandfather tapped his cane on the ground. "This is important."

A searing pain shot through his head and he fell to his knees. "You wouldn't understand, you old fool. Content to flee, to run away from responsibilities to run away from your family. Did you ever go back and see her?"

The grandfather stiffened, clutching the upper part of his cloak drawing it closer to himself. "I know what you're planning, don't act like I don't know what is happening. I don't approve of this action, most unwise, yes, most unwise. It will have repercussions I'm not sure you're prepared to deal with, I've made similar decisions, we both know about the regrets these big decisions produce. I'm not entirely sure you can do it, that body, it's wearing a bit thin."

"It will last, long enough to finish my work." He growled as he struggled to his feet.

"Your work, this massacre of your orchestration, I never believed it would be possible to see things come to this." The grandfather stared at him as he stood back up. "I can't decide whether you're a rogue, a half-wit or both!"

"I am simply what this war has crafted me into." He reached towards the doors. "You don't have to like it, you don't have to accept it," He looked back at the old man as he pushed on the doors to the next partition. "It simply is what it is."

He slid into the next partition. He frowned as he looked forward.

"Oh my, we have been hard on ourselves, haven't we…?" The small man was dressed in a tatter black jacket with tattered checked pants. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the partition, a recorder laid in front of the man, his mop-top hair cut, dark black. His face almost as if it was made of plastic. "Is this really what you want to do?"

"Want to do?" He replied. "No, I have to do." He pushed forward, hoping to ignore the impish man. As he crossed the man, he looked down at him. "Some corners of the universe have bred some horrible things, after all, and they have to be fought, isn't that right?"

"Pity that you've become the monster's monster. The thing that the boogeyman hears going bump in the night." The hobo said. "Why do this?"

"It is all that's left to do." He replied, walking past the hobo.

"Destroy everything? Blow it all up, probably something with a big red button?" The hobo asked, turning.

"Reality was craving me to enter this conflict. It begged me, and in the end this is what it has wanted, what I have been driven to since the first day." He said, stopping just before the door.

"I see. Well, now I know you're mad, I just wanted to make sure." The hobo said. "I had hoped, maybe there was some reason left in you, some glimmer of something, but, no, just madness."

"I tried being sane in a universe gone mad." He said reaching out towards the partition's door, and he pushed against the door. "People died, anyways."

He walked into the next partition.

"Good grief, man!" The tall man with the made white hair said. His hawkish nose preceding him as he turned, he wore a frilled red velvet jacket. "Is this your best plan? The Brigadier could come up with something better on one of his worse days."

"It's war, endless war. It isn't like your leisure days, swanning about that drippy island." He said derisively.

"You could try something else, fight this, face it! You're avoiding…"

"I've been avoiding this, my whole life. This is me, facing this, now." He snapped, he looked at the man, who looked like a scarecrow dressed in disco fancy dress. "I'm fighting this."

"No, you are being a coward and taking the easy way out!" The scarecrow snapped back. "I expect better from the likes of you!" The scarecrow shook his head. "I'm beginning to lose confidence for the first time in my life…"

"I lost my confidence a long time before now. This is the best I can do. The alternative is endless torture of reality." He pressed forward past the scarecrow. He pressed against the doors, laying his head against the door's surface as his head roared in pain.

He took a deep breath and pushed.

"I've often wondered what something like this would be like." The deep drawn out voice intoned. "I wonder if Sarah would approve."

He looked up and saw the tall man, the long brown and yellow scarf, the bohemian clothing.

"You have no room to speak to me." He replied, and stood up straight.

"Oh? Funny, as I believe this is precisely the room where I speak to you." The bohemian reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a paper bag, picked out one of the contents and ate the sweet. "It isn't too late, the moment isn't prepared yet, it isn't the end."

"It's been too late since Karn." He said.

"Oh, yes, those insufferable, old mares did mix their potions…not what they used to be, I have to say." Said the bohemian, eying him. "Do you think you have the right?"

"Did you have the right?" He replied, his growl barely covering the true contempt of the question. He glared at the bohemian and walked up to him and pointed his finger forward pressing the bohemian's chest. "Did you have the right to inflict this on me? On the universe!? You were there, you had the opportunity! But, no, like always YOU ABDICATED that responsibility, and ran off and fooled around…and like always, someone else had to pick up what you left to clean up!"

"It was not my place then." The bohemian said, narrowing his eyes. "You know that, we all know it. The question is, is this your place now? Is this what you will become?"

He turned from the bohemian and walked to the partition door. "I have no choice; this is not something I do without a concept of the suffering that will come of it. I do this in the name of peace and sanity."

He pushed the door open, glad to be rid of the bohemian. He looked forward.

"It's not cricket you know." The young one looked at him. Adorned in cricketer gear and holding a small cricket ball in his hand. "All of this, you know deep down, that it's wrong. They won't praise you, none of them will. No one will love you for this."

"I know, I'm not worried about being loved, I'm not doing this for praise." He replied, taking a deep breath. "I have no interest in how people feel about me. I know they will hate me."

"There should've been another way…"

"You know better than anyone, that this the only way." He looked at the cricketer. "Two sides, fighting a war, where there can be no winners. The only winners are the ones that end it. I plan to win this war."

"This rage, it doesn't become you. I can't believe that you've become this. I thought you were in such good hands." The cricketer looked sorrowfully at him. "I had hoped you could escape this."

"We all hoped I could escape, but we all know that in the end, I would burn with the rest of it." He said walking towards the next partition. He pushed through the door.

"Well, now you've done. You've properly done it!" The robust voice flew forward as he pushed into the next room. The owner was wearing something that looked akin to what a rainbow had vomited up. The patchwork quilt stalked about in a faux rage. "I've seen lots of screw ups, but this takes the cake! This is your plan!? Blow it up? Blow it up!? BLOW IT…."

"YES!" He yelled, cutting off the patchwork quilt man loudly. "It's the only way. You know precisely why. They are degenerate, decadent and rotten to the core! And then there's the Daleks!"

"Not all of them are broken yet, there's a future yet, or rather there would've been." The rainbow quilt man replied. The red and green sleeved arms of the man folded behind the back of the patchwork coat. "I knew deep down, all that time that I was a peril to the universe, but in the end I thought I wasn't that bad, I even saved the universe once or twice, protected the odd civilization, or at least I thought. Little did I know that you were out there, waiting in the shadows."

"The universe will survive; I will save it one last time." He said, looking sidelong at the patchwork quilt man. He walked forward and opened the partitioned door and walked into the next partition.

"Save it?" The small form asked quietly. The owner wore a panama hat and leaned against a question mark umbrella. A dark jacket hung on his frame, and an inscrutable face peered at him. "At what cost, you know what you're doing don't you?"

"You don't have the moral high ground on this." He replied taking a look at the small inscrutable man. "You played with people's lives, manipulated them to their detriment and destruction. You acted as a god."

"Not a god." The man said. "I fought gods on their own battlefields, and I won. I made short term sacrifices for the greater good, yes, but this is not a short term sacrifice. If you use that weapon….there will be no long term, just death. Death gone mad, a child looks up at the sky, his eyes turn to cinders. No more tears, only ashes. Is this honor, is this war? Is this a weapon you will use?"

"Children are already dying out there, some of them are dying more times than they know, but they die still, screaming for parents who are melted before them, children dying as history erases them, then brings them back to life only to find a more creative and torturous way of killing them again." He said, looking in the little man's blue eyes. "There are no more ripples; the whole pond is a typhoon of distortion. I will end it. End it."

He walked past the little man.

"If you pull this trigger, you will end their lives. Yours, everyone's." The little man said. "Can you really do it?"

"I have to, to save everything else." He pushed the door and opened the final partition.

In the middle of the partition was a pedestal with a box. He took a deep breath and walked forward towards the box. He reached out and touched it. He could feel the power in it, the mind of it was there as well.

"My choice, I chose this." Said a voice from behind.

He turned and looked at the one behind him. The dandy cowboy, in a fancy velvet green jacket, gray pants and a brown vest stood there. The cowboy took a deep breath.

"Yes, this was our choice." He said looking at his past, as his past stared at his future.

"Warrior…" said the cowboy.

"Doctor…" he replied. "No more, children dying in the streets, no more, war."

"No more Doctor." The velveteen cowboy said. "That weapon will do the job. It will do the one thing that none of our enemies could ever do. It will end you, end us."

"That was the choice you made." He said; he sized up the velveteen cowboy.

"How many children do you think will die?" The cowboy asked quietly, no malice in his voice, no anger.

"I don't know." He admitted. "It's a little late to think about it. The choice was made; this is the only option on the table."

"So we're giving up…" the velveteen cowboy asked. "When I made this choice, I never thought it would result in me quitting."

"Quitting? There was never anything to quit. Tressail was the point where any vestige of hope was lost." He said, he turned back to the box. "I am doing this for her."

"Don't you dare." The velveteen cowboy growled. "Don't you dare turn this into revenge. If you do this, do it because you have given up. Do it because you have become that cruel. Do it because you're done. Don't tarnish that poor child's memory with this monstrosity. Do it because you're that monstrous now. C'mon then, if you're hard enough, then do it."

He put his hands around the box and lifted it. He turned and was alone. He walked back, through the partitions, all of them empty. The pain in his head was gone. It was true, he'd finally given up, all of him.


	12. The Doctor

His head was still filled with cobwebs but he knew where he was. The mists the gentle landscape, the single stone marker, he looked around. They'd turned the valley into a giant garden, rivaling anything he'd ever seen. The blooming flowers the vines, the graveled paths circled the marker and the spokes of the circling path centered in on it.

He walked forward, his feet crunching on the gravel. He looked up at the sky. The flames and the screams and rage and the suffering it was done. Time itself was still like a melted chocolate chip, in flux, shifting uneven, but at least it was holding together. A minor miracle maybe, he thought to himself.

He could smell the sharp berry smell of Dardox blooms, and turned looking at the iridescent flowers. He looked around himself again. They had turned it in a garden. A memorial to the Time War a garden full of life, of species that from this point in history had long been lost, and in the center of this memorial to the fallen, a child's grave. An innocent killed by a soldier in a war that happened and didn't.

He continued forward towards the center. He stood before the stone marker, and fell to his knees. His arms dangled from his sides and he bowed his head.

"I wish…" he said, and for the first time heard his voice. A northern accent, the universal northern accent caught his throat by surprise. He closed his eyes. "I wish it hadn't been this way. I never meant to come back here." A tear fell from the corner of his left eye and rolled down his cheek and dripped to the ground. "I was going to end it, but I wasn't…I couldn't. It was out of my hands…" He lifted his hands, looking at the new, seamless flesh. "Everything seems to fall out of my hands, at some point." He reached into his leather jacket and drew out a small cube. It glowed silently in his hand. He gently pressed on the sides and a small image flickered into existence above the cube, a world, a globe, aflame. "But still, no more, this is all that's left, a picture, a simple image before the end. It's gone now, lost forever, don't worry, the universe is safe though. It's a shame that you can't see it, you'd love it, the lights, the skies, worlds you never got to see."

He reached forward and dug with his hand into the soft soil. A small divot became a hole and then he slowly placed the cube into the soil and covered it.

"Sir?" A voice behind him called. He turned quickly, surprised. It was a young, 51st century human woman, "Can you help me? I'm afraid I am lost."

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm not terribly sure as to where I'm at either." He said quietly. He slowly got up to his feet and brushed the dust from his knees. "I'm not even…entirely sure who I am anymore…" He smiled to himself slightly and looked around at the flowers. "It's amazing…"

"Yes, it is. There was a lot of work on this place, the survivors did their best." The woman said as she walked towards him looking at the foliage of the plants. "The Third Zone governments and the Time Agency really did their best getting the plant species before the war closed in on itself. Each plant here; is from one of the worlds lost in the war. Well, except for Skaro and Gallifrey."

"You lot are such ingenious little primates." He said, reaching up and grasping a small berry from the Dro(r)nidian Norvafloom. "Capable of such subtle notions, that so many others would overlook or think tedious. A kind of sentimentalism that most higher species simply aren't any longer capable of…" He stopped the woman was giggling. "I'm sorry, did I say something funny?"

"No, it's just, you speak as if you're some kind of god, looking down at the actions of us mere mortals." The woman said, looking at him with large brown eyes. He returned the look at her and she gulped slightly and took a step back. "I mean, that's…that's absurd right?"

"I'm not a god, was never a god." He said quietly.

"I'm sorry, I didn't…I didn't think…" the woman took a step back, clutching herself defensively. "It's just they don't normally come around here, like you said…it's sentimental."

"No, it's ok," He smiled softly at her and then looked to the plants. "I always liked this place. It's really calm. I've always liked humans, maybe for the same reason, maybe for different." He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry…I just had a very long day…my mind's…" He lifted his hand to his head and fluttered his fingers since he lost the words that he was going to say. "I just came to pay my final respects."

"Did you lose someone?" The woman asked, edging closer.

"Yeah, you could say that." He replied nodding.

The woman came to a bench and patted the seat. "Would you like to talk about it?"

"There's nothing to talk about…" He said, smiling a false smile, a transparent mask of happiness. "The war happened, and terrible things were done, and some of us did more terrible things than some others."

"Did you fight?" The woman asked.

"In the war?" He asked, and when she nodded affirmative he thought for a few minutes, and then sat down next to the woman. "I was there; I saw a lot of it. I did everything I could, I helped where I could, but in the end…"

The woman put her hands on his. "You're just one person…no one could expect you to save the universe."

"I had to try…" He said quietly, more to himself than to the woman. "In the end though, I gave up, I made a decision, a decision I have to live with."

"But you survived, though, you got out before the end." The woman smiled carefully looking at him.

"I survived, I wasn't supposed to, no one was supposed to, that was the point, but I survived." He looked up at her. "It told me that I had to survive, that this was my penance."

"No, no, dear," The woman reached up and patted him on the back, rubbing her hand over his leather jacket. "There's no penance, you can't feel that way."

"You don't understand…" He said quietly, he looked up at her. "You're so willing to forgive, but you don't know who I am. Who I should've been, when I wasn't." His eyebrows crunched together. "Who I could be…"

The woman sat back and looked down. "I'm sorry, I just…you're right, I don't even know who you are."

"I didn't either, but I do now." He said, he stood up and turned quickly to the woman and smiled.

"Well, that's good!" The woman smiled back, and then narrowed her eyebrows. "But who are you?"

"I'm still the Doctor." He said. "Only the Doctor can fix the damage, I caused during the war."

The woman giggled slightly. "Oh, now, well that's an aspiration to have!"

"I'm sorry?" He said looking at the woman quizzically.

"Well, we all know that the Doctor died…" The woman replied. "With all the other Time Lords, in the war. They all burned, honey, none survived, they're just a legend now."

He looked at her. She was still giggling slightly, but he wasn't laughing. She stopped laughing and tilted her head slightly, her eyes widened slightly.

"You're right; the Time Lords died in the flames of war, but let me tell you this." He said; he knelt down in front of her and looked her straight in the eyes. "The Doctor survived. He walked away from the war and he survived, where everyone else burned, he survived, and he's going to do what he has to, to make things right again in the universe. He has to help where he can, to restore the universe to peace and sanity, after all the chaos and rage."

The woman sat there agog. The man stood up and then in seconds had disappeared. She sat there and shook her head, disbelieving. He must have been nuts, and after a time she was thanking herself that he had only been delusional and not dangerous. Still though, she thought, he seemed to know an awful lot. However, she finally nodded assuring herself of the man's insanity. She stood up and prepared to make a decision as to which was the best way to leave and get to the Crux of Tharix when she heard the sound that was impossible to hear. A sound she refused to believe she was hearing. The sounds of the ancient grinding wheeze of engines pushing against a universe, the rumbling of cosmic forces that should not be rumbling anymore. The sound of hope in a universe that had lost so much roared in her ears as a cold breeze swept through the garden.


End file.
